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• The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self - 2021 Penguin Life, New York, NY
• Diana, Herself: An Allegory of Awakening - 2016 Cynosure Publishing, Westford, MA
• Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want - 2012 Free Press, New York, NY
• Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic - 2011 Three Rivers Press, New York, NY
• Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life, No Matter What! - 2008 Rodale , Emmaus, PA
• The Four-Day Win: End Your Diet War and Achieve Thinner Peace - 2007 Rodale, Emmaus, PA

• Martha Beck website - https://marthabeck.com/

  Author. Speaker. Wayfinder.

  Dr. Martha Beck, PhD, is a bestselling author, coach, and speaker. She has spent a lifetime offering powerful, practical, and entertaining teachings that help people improve every aspect of their lives. Martha holds three Harvard degrees in social science, and Oprah Winfrey has called her “one of the smartest women I know.”

  Martha’s published works include several self-help books and memoirs, including New York Times and international bestsellers Finding Your Own North Star, The Joy Diet, and Expecting Adam. She has also published over 150 magazine articles, including almost two decades of monthly columns for O, The Oprah Magazine.

  Martha is a passionate and engaging speaker, known for her characteristic blending of science, spirituality, and humor. As “the best-known life coach in America” (NPR, USA Today), she has spoken to audiences around the world on stage and on The Oprah Show, Good Morning America, and many other television programs.

  International nature-based retreats are also a big part of Martha’s work. Seminar participants travel from all over the world to attend her annual retreats in South Africa and Costa Rica. The rest of the time she lives in the Pennsylvania woods with her family and other assorted creatures. Her passions include nature, pajamas, and YouTube videos of unlikely animal companions.

  Martha’s recent book, The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self, was Oprah’s Book Club selection. Her latest non-fiction book, Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, was an instant New York Times Best Seller.

• Amazon -

  Dr. Martha Beck is a New York Times bestselling author, life coach, and speaker. She holds three Harvard degrees in social science, and Oprah Winfrey has called her “one of the smartest women I know.”

  Martha is a passionate and engaging teacher, known for her unique combination of science, humor, and spirituality. Her recent book, The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self, was an instant New York Times Best Seller and an Oprah’s Book Club selection.

  Her latest book, Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, is now available.

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  Martha Beck

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  This article is about the author and life coach. For the serial killer, see Martha Beck (serial killer).
  Martha Beck
  Born Martha Nibley
  November 29, 1962 (age 63)
  Provo, Utah, U.S.
  Occupation
  Authorlife coachspeakersociologist
  Alma mater Harvard University
  Notable works Leaving the Saints
  Spouse John Beck
  ​
  ​(m. 1983; div. 2004)​
  Children 3
  Parent Hugh Nibley
  Website
  marthabeck.com
  Martha Nibley Beck (born November 29, 1962) is an American author, life coach, speaker, and sociologist.

  She holds bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees from Harvard University. Beck is the daughter of Hugh Nibley, a deceased scholar of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and apologist. She received national attention after publication in 2005 of her best-seller, Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith in which she recounts her experiences of surviving sexual abuse. In addition to authoring several books, Beck is a columnist for Oprah Daily.

  Early life
  Martha Nibley was born in Provo, Utah, in 1962, the seventh of eight children of Hugh and Phyllis Nibley, and raised a Latter-day Saint in a prominent Utah family. Her father was a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU). She received a bachelor's degree in East Asian studies, along with master's and PhD degrees in sociology from Harvard University.[1][2]

  Career
  During her academic career, Beck worked as a research associate at the Harvard Business School, studying career paths and life-course changes. Before becoming a life coach, she taught sociology, social psychology, organizational behavior, and business management at Harvard and the American Graduate School of International Management. She has published academic books and articles on a variety of social science and business topics. Her non-academic books include New York Times bestsellers Expecting Adam and Leaving the Saints, as well as Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live, Steering by Starlight, and Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaiming Your True Nature, and The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self.

  Beck has also been a contributing editor for popular magazines, including Real Simple and Redbook, and has been a columnist for O, the Oprah Magazine since July 2001. Beck is the founder of Martha Beck, Inc., which offers Wayfinder Life Coach Training, and other courses based on Beck's philosophies.

  Personal life
  Beck met John Christen Beck, a fellow LDS Church member from Utah, during her undergraduate studies at Harvard. They married in the Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 21, 1983. They eventually had three children together.[3]

  After the birth of their second child, Adam, who had been diagnosed with Down syndrome prior to his birth, Beck returned with her husband and children to Utah to be closer to family and support. Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth and Everyday Magic is Beck's story about her decision to give birth to and raise Adam.[4]

  In 1990, soon after the birth of her third child, Beck, as a part-time faculty member at BYU in Provo, Utah, taught a course on the sociology of gender in the Department of Social Science. During her time as part-time faculty member at BYU, five Mormon scholars were excommunicated from the LDS Church as a consequence of public writings that were deemed critical of the church; the group became known as the September Six. She and husband, John Beck, also made critical public statements about both the excommunications and other church and BYU matters, which led to first John, then Martha herself, leaving the LDS Church in 1993.[1][5][unreliable source?]

  Since leaving the LDS Church, both Martha Beck and her now ex-husband subsequently came out publicly as gay. In 2003, Beck separated from her husband, divorcing him in 2004.[3] She now lives with her family in Pennsylvania.[6]

  Leaving the Saints
  See also: Satanic panic (Utah)
  Beck's 2005 book Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith was controversial for accusations that she was sexually abused by her father, scholar and LDS Church apologist Hugh Nibley, as well as stating she recovered memories of the abuse.[2][7][8] She writes that she had forgotten the abuse until later in her life when, in 1990, she recovered them. The veracity of recovered memories is disputed, and the American Psychological Association says "there is a consensus among memory researchers and clinicians that most people who were sexually abused as children remember all or part of what happened to them," though there is also agreement among most leaders in the field, "that although it is a rare occurrence, a memory of early childhood abuse that has been forgotten can be remembered later."[2] The allegations have been denied by Beck's mother and seven siblings.[2][7][8] The book prompted widespread reaction, much of it within the Mormon community, and an email campaign against the book's inclusion on Oprah Winfrey's website as well as in her magazine.[2][7] In her book she writes "The peculiar details of my memories had at first made me doubt myself -- they were so weird -- but in the end, reinforced my conviction that I hadn't unconsciously made something up."

  A New York Times article sums up with "Church members are also angry that Beck jokes about aspects of the Mormon faith; for example, she refers to the religious garments that Mormons wear in their temples as "holy long johns." But the main complaint about "Leaving the Saints" is that Beck has targeted one of the most admired of all the Latter-day Saints. "Books by apostates from the church, they come along all the time," Wotherspoon, of Sunstone Magazine, said. "But an attack on Hugh Nibley -- to call Hugh Nibley a pedophile and a liar, with no evidence to back it up -- of course that is going to hit the Mormon community like an earthquake."

  Works
  Books
  Beck, Martha Nibley; Beck, John C (1990). Breaking the Cycle of Compulsive Behavior. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company. ISBN 978-0-87579-290-3. OCLC 20799870.
  —— (1997). Breaking Point: Why Women Fall Apart and How They Can Re-create Their Lives. New York: Times Books. ISBN 978-0-8129-6375-5.
  —— (1999). Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic. Times Books. ISBN 978-0812929805.
  —— (2001). Finding Your Own North Star. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8129-3218-8.
  —— (2003). The Joy Diet: 10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life. Crown Publishers. ISBN 978-0-609-60990-3.
  —— (2005). Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith. Crown Publishers. ISBN 9780609609910. OCLC 55494925.
  —— (2007). The Four Day Win: End Your Diet War and Achieve Thinner Peace. Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Books. ISBN 978-1-59486-607-4.
  —— (2009). Steering by Starlight: The Science and Magic of Finding Your Destiny. Rodale Books. ISBN 978-1-60529-864-1.
  —— (2011). Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1-4516-2448-9.
  —— (2013). The Martha Beck Collection: Essays on Creating Your Right Life (self-published). Vol. 1. San Luis Obispo, California: Martha Beck, Inc. ISBN 978-0989306706.
  —— (2016). Diana, Herself: An Allegory of Awakening (self-published). San Luis Obispo, California: Cynosure Publishing. ISBN 978-1944264000.
  —— (2021). The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self (The Open Field). Penguin. ISBN 978-1984881489.
  —— (2024). Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity and Finding Your Life's Purpose. Piatkus. ISBN 978-0349441719.
  Thesis
  Beck, Martha Nibley (1994). Flight from the iron cage: LDS women's responses to the paradox of modernization (PhD). Harvard University. OCLC 32034090.

• London Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/apr/21/oprah-winfrey-life-coach-martha-beck-how-be-happier

  Interview
  ‘Let yourself be quirky’: Oprah Winfrey’s life coach on how to be much happier
  This article is more than 4 years old
  Viv Groskop
  Martha Beck survived abuse, went to Harvard, left her husband – then began working with the world’s biggest TV star. She discusses self-help, nonconformity and the power of truth

  Viv Groskop
  Wed 21 Apr 2021 05.00 EDT
  Share
  “This has almost been like a global meditation. What isn’t working in your life rises to the surface. Going back to the way it was? It’s not going to happen.” Martha Beck – the bestselling author and Harvard-trained sociologist known as “Oprah Winfrey’s life coach” – is talking about responses to the pandemic.

  “Every act of creation begins with the destruction of the status quo,” she continues. “It looks like chaos. But, really, it’s a freedom from the tyranny of ‘how things have always been done’. Pascal said that most of our misery comes from the fact that we are unable to sit quietly in a room. And, by the billions over the past year, we have been forced to sit quietly in a room. Now people’s questions are coming from a much deeper place. Before, it was: ‘How do I change my life?’ Now, it’s: ‘What do I want from my life?’”

  Beck, 58, has been listening to these questions for years in her coaching workshops, not least through her association with Winfrey. She first appeared on her TV show in 2000 and between 2001 and 2020 was a columnist for O magazine, which in its heyday had a print circulation of 2.5m (it is now digital-only).

  Of course, as Beck says, the last person who needs a life coach is Winfrey. But still, she is not a bad connection to have. In any case, the message Beck has been pushing her entire career has found its moment: life is short, so don’t waste time pretending to be something you are not. (I paraphrase.) During the pandemic, Beck has been speaking to devotees from her home in Pennsylvania, surrounded by the forest she loves, and working on her new book, The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self.

  Beck has lived this idea on an epic scale. Raised in a devout Mormon family in Utah – she was the seventh of eight children – she renounced her faith and her family, writing a book about surviving sexual abuse at the hands of her father, a prominent church elder. She had three children with her husband before leaving the marriage and coming out as a lesbian. (Her husband also came out as gay.) She quit Harvard – where she had gained a BA, an MA and a PhD – to become a career coach when she realised that the life of an academic was making her miserable.

  Martha Beck in her 20s
  View image in fullscreen
  ‘Born with the approval-seeking personality of an orphaned lapdog’ ... Beck in her 20s. Photograph: Courtesy of Martha Beck

  When it comes to waking up and smelling the coffee, this is a woman who owns the T-shirt factory. For almost 30 years, she had no contact with the family in which she grew up. (Most of her family rejected the account she gave of her experiences, saying she must have “had sex with the devil” as a child.) During the pandemic, though, that changed: “My younger sister recently contacted me after 30 years. She has left the Mormon church and we’ve been texting every day for the last six months. It’s unbelievably sweet to have that love and friendship back,” she says.

  The work Beck is best known for is about following your gut instinct instead of being led by societal expectations. Her books are called things such as Finding Your Own North Star and Steering By Starlight. To self-help sceptics, she is a straightforward eye-roll.

  But Beck is not easily dismissed: she has a playful eccentricity and unusual intellectualism, she is painfully self-aware and her extraordinary upbringing speaks for itself. She describes herself in her new book as being “born with the approval-seeking personality of an orphaned lapdog”. She goes on: “From childhood, my one overarching life directive was: do whatever it takes to win approval. Raised in a devout Mormon family, I obeyed every rule of my religion and worked hard at school. Then I went off to Harvard, which was about as far from my childhood culture as I could get without moving to Pluto. I managed by letting everyone I encountered assume that I agreed with them, passing for a devout Mormon at home and a rational atheist at school.”

  Over time, she argues, these kinds of cover-ups in our lives, big and small, can make us feel uncomfortable to the extent that we acquire physical symptoms. To quote a typical Beck column: “The body truth goes ahead of the mind lie.”

  This kind of thinking is easy to lampoon. There are a lot of people who want to believe that the pain in their neck is related, say, to the fact that they can’t stand their husband. (Lose the husband, lose the pain in the neck.) But Beck is used to pushback. When self-help became part of the mainstream conversation in the US around the time The Oprah Winfrey Show launched in 1986, there was a lot of criticism and sniffiness: “There were fringe elements who were going towards new age and religious ideas … And most of it doesn’t work. But some of it does. And as more and more of us have experiences which go outside what our cultural materialism tells us is possible, we have a choice. We can either lie and say it never happened. Or we can throw the doors of our perceptions open wide.

  Oprah Winfrey on a video conference with Martha Beck
  View image in fullscreen
  ‘Her producer said I was the only expert that made her feel less stressed’ ... Oprah Winfrey on a video conference with Beck. Photograph: Oprah Daily

  “There are things that are not dreamed of in our philosophy. I have coached thousands of people. And there are very few who have not had experiences which are not entirely explicable. But we don’t talk about these things always because it’s not culturally acceptable.”

  Still, a stigma persists. She expects it and it doesn’t bother her. “Standards of prestige in the mind of Harvard academics go like this: supreme court justice, Harvard professor, doctor, lawyer … then you get down to cosmetic surgeons, janitors, prostitutes and finally life coaches,” she says. “But you know what? Who cares?”

  Her experiences when she left Harvard were also influenced by the fact that she was expecting a child with Down’s syndrome. Many colleagues at Harvard were sceptical that she would cope, as she and her then husband were career academics and would not be able to raise a child with a learning disability. Beck felt this was profoundly wrong and began to hear the baby “talking” to her in dreams. Her son, Adam, is now in his early 30s and a lot of his experience of the world informs her belief that there are many things that we don’t understand.

  You have to give up your defences. You have to give up everything that stands between you and happiness
  “I had a son in my house who was doing things that were inexplicable from a Newtonian perspective. He’s like the Narnia wardrobe. How can I care what the people at Harvard think?” She has written in the past about Adam being able to sense the thoughts of wild animals and calls him her “handy-dandy portable Zen master”.

  But our desire to conform and seek approval runs deep, she says. In her work as a coach, she has spoken to thousands of people who are reluctant to give up on lives they hate, because they are scared of the alternative. Her job, she says, is to inspire people to action. She argues that the vicissitudes of the pandemic have made billions of people question whether they are continuing to pretend to be someone they are not because of what others think.

  How do you change that, though? “Burn every bridge but truth. If you want the job that will make you happy, get out of the job that is making you miserable. Scary. But it’s not going to happen any other way. If you need a relationship that will make you happy, get out of the relationship that is not making you happy. Or get out of the mindset that is preventing you from getting your heart broken. Walk out there with your heart vulnerable and open. You have to give up your defences. You have to give up everything that stands between you and happiness. Most people think they’re all about happiness. But ask them to drop what doesn’t make them happy? Suddenly fear comes in.”

  There is something extremely attractive about being the kind of person who knows what makes them happy and takes the steps to stay that way. But it is often counterintuitive. Beck describes how she came into Winfrey’s orbit. Shortly after she left academia and was working as a career coach, she was contacted by a producer at Winfrey’s show. They were looking for an expert to talk about stress. “They called all these experts on ‘how to destress your life’,” she says. “The producer called me and I said: ‘Hmm. I can’t really talk to you because I’m going skiing.’ I love skiing. And I will go for what makes me happy over anyone and anything.

  Martha Beck in 2005
  View image in fullscreen
  ‘Burn every bridge but truth’ ... Beck in 2005. Photograph: Will Powers/AP

  “The producer called back and said it was the only answer she got from all the experts that made her feel less stressed. So I went skiing anyway and, while I was there, I got the call from Oprah saying they wanted me on.”

  I think this is the thing that attracts Beck’s followers: she has given up trying to control things and make things happen. In a world where we are encouraged to “just do it”, Beck preaches that sometimes doing nothing – or doing whatever you want, with no agenda – can be the answer.

  Beck is known for her practical suggestions and exercises. So, what is a quick fix for reconnecting to people we haven’t seen for a long time over lockdown? “The one thing that has been shown to increase happiness across the board, but also connect people, is to write a letter of gratitude to someone towards whom you feel grateful: a teacher, a family member, an acquaintance. And then call them on the phone and read them the letter. People who do this not only develop close relationships really quickly, but also their happiness is elevated for months. This kind of gratitude is a kind of magic and it’s something we can do proactively, no matter what the circumstances.” (I look forward to the call, friends.)

  What advice does she have for people who feel judged and crave the societal approval that she craved for years? Post-pandemic, how do you avoid going back to a life that doesn’t feel quite right? “Notice that, when you’re not yourself because you want people to like you, you hate your life. There’s this idea called “the empty elevator”. Say you don’t like your life on the floor that you’re on and you want to go to a higher perspective … When you get in the elevator, not many people are going to come with you. So you get in anyway and you might be thinking: ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake. No one wanted to come with me. I’m all alone in this elevator.’ And then you get to your new level, the doors open and you find a room of people who are excited for you to be exactly where you wanted to be.”

  Now that society is slowly opening up again, Beck says this is the ideal time to stick to your guns and be clear with yourself about whom you enjoy spending time with and what you love doing. “If you are being honest and you are yourself with people, then they connect with you truly. So be true to yourself. Let yourself be seen as quirky or odd. Then the relationships you create with people will be real and solid and indestructible.”

  This seems like a helpful post-pandemic message: better to be weird than fake. But there is, she adds, another shortcut to keeping it real and connecting with your true self: “Get a dog. The truth is in that dog’s eyes.”

  The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self by Martha Beck (Little, Brown, £14.99) is out now. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

• Big Think - https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/martha-beck-anxiety/

  March 14, 2025
  Anxiety always lies: Martha Beck on overcoming fear and finding purpose
  When your life’s truth and the reality you live become out of sync, you risk falling into an “anxiety spiral.”
  Silhouette of a human head with an outlined brain, set against a background of abstract swirling white lines on black.
  Credit: Yakobchuk / Getty Images / Big Think
  Key Takeaways
  In Beyond Anxiety, Beck distinguishes between fear, a necessary response to an immediate danger, and anxiety, a mental interpretation of a threat that is not physically present. The “anxiety spiral” is fueled by personal and societal factors that focus our attention on frightening events we can do little about. Beck recommends managing anxiety by embracing kindness, curiosity, and creativity, which help lead individuals to their life’s purpose.
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  We need creative solutions to society’s problems. What we don’t need is the anxiety that accompanies not having those solutions. Uncertainty about the future makes humans edgy enough. So, what can we do to better understand, accept, and manage such anxiety?

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  Martha Beck, a Harvard-trained sociologist and New York Times-bestselling author, has thought long and hard to answer that question, which she presents in her latest book, Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose. Big Think caught up with Beck to discuss the book, why the modern world has made us so anxious, and what we can do to calm our nerves in the face of our fears.

  Big Think: What was the journey from your last book, The Way of Integrity (2021), to writing this one? What was the thought process leading from the topic of integrity to anxiety?

  Beck: I write self-help because I desperately need it. I have had pretty much every ordinary psychological problem one can have, barring true mental illness, [so] I spent a long time meditating and figuring out how to make my life better. The combination of observing life as it unfolded and my inner life took me to The Way of Integrity. I noticed that I would suffer whenever my actions were out of line with my deepest sense of truth. When everything was in line, I would not suffer. I’d be happy, and things would work better. So that was that book.

  Then people started coming to me and saying, “I really believe in what you’re saying, and I’m living as close to integrity as I possibly can, but I’m always scared. I am so anxious.” It puzzled me because that had not been my experience. Then I realized that it took — I don’t know — maybe 10,000 hours of sitting meditation before I noticed nothing I worried about was ever in the room with me.

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  I remember one time, terrible things were happening in the world, as they always are, and I was sitting in meditation. I thought, “How could I be expected to feel calm under these circumstances”? Another part of me said, “You mean the circumstances of your bedroom? Because my circumstances were all in my bedroom.” I started to see that most of my anxiety was based on things that were not true.

  That’s the link between the two books: The deepest lie we tell ourselves is that we should be afraid.

  Big Think: Can you tell me more about that?

  Beck: We live in perpetual fear despite being the safest people in history, by and large. This causes what I call the “anxiety spiral.” Due to the negativity bias, our attention preferentially goes to things that make us anxious. We pay more and more attention to things like the media or online algorithms. [These, in turn], feed back to us what gets the most attention, and it’s usually anxiety.

  You’ve got the brain doing it on one level, and you’ve got society doing it on a much bigger level. The result is the entire population spiraling into anxiety and not being able to get out.

  Big Think: Are we suffering more these days than, say, 100 years ago, or is it that we’re able to have these conversations now because it’s relatively destigmatized to talk about anxiety?

  Beck: I think we’re experiencing more, and there are a few reasons for that. The first one is the sheer size of the population communicating frightening things across a huge expanse of space and different social situations. There are more of us on Earth now, and we’re communicating much more rapidly than ever. Again, we’re most interested in frightening things anywhere in the world.

  [Another reason is that] we live in this increasingly abnormal environment that we call normal. Before the Industrial Revolution, we would wake up to the sound of wind or rain, maybe the ocean or a river, each other’s voices, the sounds of animals, the songs of birds. I just read a study showing that just hearing bird songs improves mood and health indicators. (I got a recording of bird songs to listen to during the winter.)

  Separated from nature, separated from the small physical tasks that are easier to wrap your head around, we live in an increasingly unnatural world for our evolutionary being and our physiology. We’re robbed of the things that would calm us and hyper-exposed to things that we would never have heard about without telecommunications.

  So, yeah, we are more anxious.

  [Language] gets in the way of the truth of our lived experience.

  Big Think: How would you define anxiety as opposed to, say, fear?

  For instance, Joesph LeDoux, the neuroscientist credited with discovering the “fear circuit,” wrote an article in 2015 lamenting that he used the wrong terminology. What he called the fear circuit is threat detection because the emotion of fear comes after and involves other circuits. He said, “Nothing gets in the way of truth — or science — more than language.”

  Beck: Always. It gets in the way of the truth of our lived experience, as well.

  Big Think: A lot of mental interpretation happens after the initial feeling, right? It’s how you appraise those bodily signals that become your reality.

  Beck: Absolutely. I would sharply distinguish between fear — a healthy instinct that galvanizes us into action when there is actual danger — and anxiety — the interpretation and language with which we dress our emotional impulses.

  It’s one thing to feel an emotional impulse and say, “Oh, I had an irrational thought that the economy would collapse. I’ve got no proof of it, so I will put that away.” But we don’t tend to recognize irrational fears as irrational. We read them as the real environment: “In the room with me right now, there is a predator called ‘the economy will collapse.’”

  We are such brilliant verbal creatures who are highly sensitive to fear. We are storytellers. Anything that makes us afraid that does not from an event in the room, but from a mental depiction of that thought, I would call anxiety.

  Big Think: What’s your take on the body’s role in anxiety?

  Beck: I’ve noticed that when somebody’s in a life that is not working for them, one of their first reactions is to get emotionally tense. They also get physically tense. It’s like their body fights back against a circumstance it doesn’t feel is right — [for example] they are in the wrong job or the wrong relationship,

  Their body shuts down. They don’t want to be touched, and then they get sick. I think it’s because we’re the only species who will force ourselves to do something for years that we don’t enjoy by telling ourselves, “We have to do this.” The body keeps saying, “No.”

  Our body is always trying to get us back to the truth. When we don’t go back to the truth, the tension between the body and whatever we’re living, that comes up as anxiety as well.

  Anxiety is not bad. It’s just stupid.

  Big Think: What would you say about the idea of “eradicating” or “getting rid of” anxiety?

  Beck: Anxiety is not bad. It’s just stupid. If you want to listen to it, fine. Just remember you’re talking to an animal [yourself], and it’s an animal connected to language.

  If I say, “I’m trying to eradicate you,” this would not be a calming thing for you to hear. I should say, “Can you calm and relax your anxiety?” The way I do that is with kindness. Because I can’t tell you to do a calm thing and have it calm you. But I can ask you to say a kind sentence to your fear. Even if you don’t feel it, you can do that.

  Basically, the part of us that’s anxious is like a small, frightened animal. That kind, internal self-talk is something that you can force yourself to do, even if you don’t feel it. You can’t force yourself to feel calm or compassionate, but you can get yourself to do kind behaviors.

  Big Think: In your book, you also touch on life purpose, creativity, and curiosity as important for managing anxiety.

  Beck: Your life’s purpose is to experience something that is its own excuse for being. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson wrote, “Then beauty is its own excuse for Being.” Joy, compassion, love, enlightenment, illumination, wisdom — [these are] the things that ultimately make life enjoyable in the moment.

  If you follow what calms your anxiety, you will go toward sensations like compassion and connection. At that point, you will find enormous joy in healing things that hurt and magnifying things that help. You will find joy in something that affects others positively. I’ve never worked with a client — and this is after thousands of clients — who found that their purpose in life did not help other people. That just seems to be built into our biology.

  Joy is our ultimate purpose for being. When we’re without anxiety, curiosity leads us toward our specific purpose. All of our curiosities are specific. I may be more curious about watercolors than you are. You may be more curious about journalism. But our curiosities serve our hearts and psyches. They serve others as well. Curiosity is the link that takes you to your unique way of serving.

  Joy is our ultimate purpose for being.

  Big Think: I see how that enables one to enter a flow state rather than an anxious state as well.

  Beck: Nobody in a state of panic creates things out of that panic that can help others. A lot of people think they need panic to motivate them. They believe that, without anxiety, they wouldn’t be motivated. But the fact is that we’re far more motivated by things like love, fascination, and delight than we are by fear.

  Big Think: I’m trying to think of an example where creativity comes out of anxiety, but they’re antithetical to each other.

  Beck: Anxiety is a barren field. It doesn’t bring forth crops.

  Big Think: Unless you end up writing a book about it.

  Beck: Exactly. When I got curious about it, I felt motivated to write.

• London Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jan/07/the-anxiety-secret-how-the-worlds-leading-life-coach-stopped-living-in-fear-martha-beck

  The anxiety secret: how the world’s leading life coach stopped living in fear
  This article is more than 11 months old
  Famous for her work with Oprah Winfrey, Martha Beck is a bestselling author and self-help superstar. But for 60 years she was anxious and terrified - until she found a simple, uplifting answer

  Emine Saner
  Emine Saner
  Tue 7 Jan 2025 05.00 EST
  Share
  All her life, Martha Beck had been anxious, but a few years ago she began to get really curious about anxiety. And curiosity, she wants us all to know, may just be the path out of paralysing, life-spoiling terror. During the pandemic, Beck – a bestselling author and life coach – started looking deeper into anxiety in order to help her clients. It was something she thought she knew about, having experienced it throughout her life, and over the years she had followed the standard advice: she had practised meditation for 30 years, and been on medication, but now Beck was starting to wonder if inner peace was as far as it went.

  Instead of trying to control her anxiety, Beck started to befriend it: “I started treating myself like a frightened animal and doing for myself what we all instinctively know will calm a frightened animal.” Imagine, she says, “you found a freezing, dirty puppy on your doorstep, and you decided you wanted to help it. What would you do? Get down on its level, speak to it kindly and softly. Don’t try to explain to it what it needs to do next – it’s an animal. Allow it to be afraid while regarding it with compassion.” When she tried this on herself, Beck says she could “dramatically feel this shift in my psychology, my body and my brain”. And then, she says with a laugh, “I got into creativity and things got really weird.”

  We’re speaking over Zoom, with Beck at home in Pennsylvania. One of her paintings, of the forest that surrounds her house, is on the wall behind her. The anxiety spiral, she decided, needed not just to be calmed, but to be replaced with something else: curiosity and creativity. She noticed, she writes in her new book, Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, a kind of “toggle effect between anxiety and creativity: when one is up and running, the other seems to go silent”.

  Beck in her home studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania, December 2024.
  View image in fullscreen
  Beck in her home studio: ‘I haven’t been anxious for a couple of years now. And the 60 years prior to that, I was always anxious.’ Photograph: Caroline Gutman/The Guardian
  Beck’s previous book, The Way of Integrity – which summed up her philosophy of achieving happiness through being true to yourself – was, she thought, “my farewell to self-help. The basic premise is that if you can find out your truth, whatever that is, and live according to it, you will not have any more psychological pain. And I stand by that. But after it was published, a lot of people said, ‘I’m living in total integrity, but I’m so scared all the time.’” It was the same for Beck. She knew her anxious thoughts were just that – a fear response gone awry in a moment that wasn’t actually dangerous – but merely knowing it wasn’t enough. She needed to get out of her mind.

  She swapped an anxiety spiral for a creativity spiral, losing herself in drawing and painting, which she still makes time for every day, but she stresses that we shouldn’t stick to society’s idea of what “creative expression” entails. It could be making a sandwich or working out how to fix the car. “It’s anything that you create, whether that’s a dinner party or a doodle, or a conversation, or setting up a fort with your child. It doesn’t have to be high art, but it’s making something, and that will connect you with curiosity.” She became obsessed by her creative work. “What shocked me was the euphoria of it. It was much more powerful than the times when I have taken medication to stop anxiety.” She also noticed it in others who had embraced creativity, in the video workshops and online community she runs. “I haven’t been anxious for a couple of years now,” she says. “And the 60 years prior to that, I was always anxious.”

  The marketplace of fear out there is hard at work making other people scared. That is at an all-time high
  Beck is routinely described as “Oprah Winfrey’s life coach” – she first appeared on Winfrey’s TV show in 2000, and for a long time wrote advice for the presenter’s magazine. This is the second time I’ve spoken to Beck; since we first spoke many years ago, she has become something of a self-help superstar. This year, she has appeared on a run of high-profile podcasts. She must be pleased with the success she’s had? “I don’t care,” she says with a laugh. “I do not freakin’ care. You know what I care about today? The painting I’m doing. I’m obsessed with this painting, like I keep looking at it, I’ve got paint supplies everywhere. I got my watercolour palette right here.” She likes to practise the philosophy of non-attachment. While she says that if her new book “can help people feel good, my joy will be unbounded”, on a personal level she has no interest in how it will do. “It could totally fail, I don’t care. I’m not even looking – I’m interested in the next book.” She laughs. “Do not tell my publicist.”

  Creative expression … some of Beck’s finely detailed paintings.
  View image in fullscreen
  Creative expression … some of Beck’s finely detailed paintings. Photograph: Caroline Gutman/The Guardian

  It’s an understatement to say that Beck does not follow the script, but she stopped caring what people thought long ago. She was raised in Utah, in a large Mormon family, but left the church and wrote a book about surviving sexual abuse by her father, a prominent Mormon scholar. She swapped faith for rationality, went to Harvard where she collected degrees in sociology and became a lecturer, then – to the dismay of many big-brained people around her – abandoned her career in academia to become a life coach. She had married and had three children, but then she and her husband both came out as gay. Beck has been with her partner, Karen, for more than 20 years, and now they are in a “throuple” with another partner, the writer and podcaster Rowan Mangan (Beck and Mangan host a podcast together). Four years ago, at the age of 58, Beck became a mother again when Mangan had their daughter, Lila. “It’s amazing,” says Beck, beaming. “We have such a countercultural family.”

  Karen fell in love with Mangan first. “[She] came to me and said, ‘I’m feeling so much love, I don’t know what this is.’ And I was like, ‘You’re in love. This is amazing.’ I really thought they would move into the master bedroom and I would go into the guest room. I looked for the fear and the anxiety and the jealousy, but there was nothing but joy. So all three of us hung out, and then we hung out some more, saying, ‘This is normal, right?’” she laughs. “Finally, we’re like, we’re all in love with each other. How does this even happen?”

  It’s not like she went looking for a polyamorous relationship, she says; she knows it sounds wacky and outside the societal norm (though it is part of the culture for some Mormons – ironically for Beck, who abandoned her childhood religion). “I started to think, it’s not weird that I love my three kids – and now I have a fourth, and I love her too. People can accept that, but the idea that you can partner with more than one person at a time is just culturally unusual for us. But now I think about it, I’m like, how do people make it work with just two? That’s like a two-legged stool, there’s no stability there.” Of course they all get angry and frustrated at times, she says, but “what it amounts to is you’ve got two other people who say, ‘I’ve got your back.’”

  Beck’s son Adam, who is in his 30s and has Down’s syndrome, also lives with them. “We’re just such an odd little bunch, out in the forest, and I live in a state of perpetual awe at the way things unfold. If I were to write a memoir about my entire life, I think it would be called ‘I did not see that coming’.”

  Partnering with more than one person at a time is culturally unusual for us. But now I’m like, how do people make it work with just two?
  It is often said that we live in the age of anxiety. Beck smiles and says, “I agree, but the Black Death must have been kind of difficult, and the second world war not so awesome. But what I think we have now is this incredible engine of information in the internet.” It’s not just the frightening or unsettling stories we see every day in the news, she says, it’s also the endless cruelty and hostility of people on social media and in forums. “There’s a tremendous amount of that zipping back and forth.”

  We’re stuck in an age, she says, “where knowledge is not power. Attention is power, and people have monetised other people’s attention – and nothing gets higher levels of attention than fear. Even sex doesn’t hold a candle to fear. So it’s a very deliberate strategy to upset people more and more as they get numb to certain levels of expressed threat.” On a personal level, anxiety can make us feel “deep discontent, and you start accessing all your worst characteristics, and then you desperately look for a way to feel better”. It could be substances, it could be relationships or shouting at people on the internet. “You get angry and self-loathing, and it just goes on and on unless you stop it.”

  On a societal level, Beck believes anxiety carries a lot of responsibility for “judgment, comparison. Polarisation is the biggest one.” Anxiety “makes us unkind [and] more likely to try to control other people, to tell stories about how they are not good, and how they’re not there to help you, they’re going to hurt you, and anything other than you is extremely ‘other’.” If Beck did have a flash of anxiety – rare for her these days – it was at the re-election of Donald Trump, who wields fear like a weapon. Trump’s alarming and theatrical pronouncements about the dangers of everything from the Democrats to migrants to climate scientists “sure gets the brain’s attention. The marketplace of fear out there is hard at work making other people scared, and I do think that is at an all-time high.” As a sociologist, “I was looking at the way the entire culture is feeding the spin of anxiety in all of us.”

  We all know by now that anxiety gives us an evolutionary advantage. “If you’ve got 15 puppies and a cobra in the room, you want to pay attention to the cobra and get to the puppies later,” says Beck. “That means that we immediately preferentially pay attention to anything negative, and that starts this spin of anxiety. But what fires together, wires together.” Instead of defaulting to anxiety, Beck says it would be more helpful to rewire the brain to seek curiosity and creativity. “If you are continuously activating the mechanisms of creativity when you’re confronted with a situation, instead of the mechanisms of fear, you [start to] go to creativity instead of anxiety. Get rewired.”

  Martha Beck.
  View image in fullscreen
  Beck: ‘It was like being given this immense gift, just by deciding I don’t want to be scared all the time.’ Photograph: Caroline Gutman/The Guardian

  Western capitalist society has made many of us feel that creative pursuits for their own sake (and our own sanity) are a waste of time when we should be being productive and making money. Beck started her creative obsession when she allocated a month to throw herself into it. She told herself it was research for her book, and therefore “I was able to fit it into [a] permission structure. At the end of the month, when I was supposed to finish the book, I couldn’t stop drawing, and I didn’t care about the book. Not at all.”

  The reality for most of us is that we can’t devote our lives only to our creative passions – neither can Beck, who points out she’s the family breadwinner – but it’s about bringing them in when we can. And not just for individual gain. “It’s not running off to sit by yourself and be happy. It’s, ‘OK, now I’m thinking creatively, let me think of a way to clean up the oceans, a way to bring the carbon out of the air and reverse climate change,’” she says. “I do believe if you get a critical mass of people who are connected to resolving problems with kindness and creativity, and who have developed that in their brains, that the entire society could turn.” The death of capitalism? More equality and joy, less fear and selfishness? It sounds so radical. “It better be,” says Beck. (Her next book, she says, is about what a post-capitalist society might look like.)

  What would she say to people who feel they have no passions, or creativity? “First, you’re probably exhausted – everything in our lifestyle leads to physical and psychological burnout. You’re not going to feel passionate if what you need is sleep. I used to try so hard to get people to resurrect their passions. They were just tired! Do whatever it takes to rest until you get up above minimum.” The idea of being swept away by a great passion is unhelpful; it will probably start as just a flicker. “You may be slightly curious, you know, about something like meteors, just random things. And then you might, from your bed, watch a show about hunting for meteorites. And then you might think, ‘Well, that sounds interesting. I’m going to get myself a metal detector.’ When people get rested and they have space, human curiosity is so adorable – we have ‘neoteny’, that thing that makes us childlike all our lives. You get your passion back, but first you get it as curiosity, and then you get connection, and it builds.”

  Writing this book, and delving deep into anxiety, has been life-changing for Beck. “It was like being given this immense gift, just by deciding I don’t want to be scared all the time,” she says. “I just thought, I don’t think I have to be anxious any more.” A life without anxiety, she adds, “is not just OK, it’s euphoric”.

  Beyond Anxiety by Martha Beck is published by Piatkus on 7 January. Beyond Anxiety by Martha Beck (Little, Brown Book Group, £16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Beck, Martha. Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life, No Matter What! Rodale. May 2008. c.258p. ISBN 978-1-59488-813-5. $24.95. PSYCH

In this self-help guide with a fantasy-fiction twist, sociologist, life coach, and O: The Oprah Magazine columnist Beck continues in the spirit of her earlier work, Finding Your Own North Star. Here, her clients' stories illustrate the progress and pitfalls of finding one's purpose in life. Their journeys, sparked by challenging exercises, are adventurous, and the narrative is hilarious. Beck also incorporates themes and outcomes that she explored earlier in her memoirs Expecting Adam and Leaving the Saints. Much of her advice, laid out in a three-stage process, may initially seem contrary, counterintuitive, or repetitive (e.g., telling your life story backwards). In the first stage, readers identify goals and eliminate obstacles. In the second, they envision the future, find messages in dreams, and forge a middle path between the past and the future. And in the final stage, they live their destiny, observing coincidences, working miracles, and breaking new trails. A concluding chapter shows the process at work in Beck's own life. While the author's New Age spirituality may put off some, her writing style will appeal to fantasy and adventure fans, not to mention the sizable audience who reads her O column.--Lucille M. Boone, San Jose P.L., CA

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2008 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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Boone, Lucille M. "Beck, Martha. Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life, No Matter What!" Library Journal, vol. 133, no. 5, 15 Mar. 2008, p. 81. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A177829611/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d8dd932a. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025.

Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaiming Your True Nature.

By Martha Beck.

Dee. 2011. 336p. Free Press, $26 (9781451624489). 158.1.

Informed by her own peripatetic and tumultuous life experiences, internationally recognized counselor, author, columnist, and life-coach Beck has developed an enthusiastic and emotive guide designed to help individuals reclaim their true essence and capture a more conscious acceptance of personal desires, needs, and goals. Employing four principles she terms "Wordlessness," "Oneness," "Imagination," and "Forming," Beck prescribes both concrete and ethereal methods for harnessing one's unrecognized powers to achieve a more authentic presence. By tapping into these underutilized forces, it is possible to refine one's thinking and define one's attitudes, and the resultant revelations can boost one's productivity. Aided by inventive examples, specific exercises, and intriguing questionnaires, readers are encouraged to embrace the contextual insights such programs bestow. An energetic devotee and indefatigable practitioner of these precepts, Beck communicates the benefits and extols the rewards to be found in leading a more thoughtful, natural, and creative life. Filled with astonishing first-person experiences and sprightly anecdotes, Beck's guide tantalizes with limitless possibilities.--Carol Haggas

Haggas, Carol

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Haggas, Carol. "Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaiming Your True Nature." Booklist, vol. 108, no. 8, 15 Dec. 2011, p. 2. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A275850667/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0cd96f77. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025.

Finding Your Way in a Wild New World

Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want

By Martha Beck

Free press

Like all "wayfinders" or "menders" (Martha Beck's terms for those of us who share an urgent drive to realize our own true natures and work to restore the planet's balance), you may be aware of something calling you to become the change you wish to see in the world. "Start immediately," she says. "I mean, this very moment."

Beck says that we don't need external institutions or teachers to show us the ropes. "There aren't any fixed structures on the wayfinder's path, and there is no institutionalized way of training. You can find other menders--in fact, you'll draw them to you--but the only ropes they can show you are the ones they're weaving as they go along. Wayfinders, by definition, create paths where there are none and find destinations no one knew were there."

And she promises that though the wayfinder's path is rooted in stillness, it's sure to take us through "the most wildly active corners of the wild new world." Beck has given us a handbook to riding the turbulent waves of change to find our own right life and, in the process, help others as well. Beginning with what she calls her "rhinoceros moment" in the African wild--a moment of startling clarity, beauty, and joy that could have as easily have resulted in death as in a whole new way of seeing and navigating the world--Beck has sought out the ancient wisdom of many cultures. She believes that in them, we will find the key to healing ourselves and our planet. Her four simple yet powerful tools for transformation--wordlessness, oneness, imagination, and forming--help us discover our hidden inner identity and unleash our own amazing creative energy. And we won't be left stranded and alone as we do this necessary work. Beck assures us that we will be led to a "tribe" of like-minded people who can help and companion us on our way.

Martha Beck holds a PhD from Harvard University and is the author of several books, including the best-selling Finding Your Own North Star and Expecting Adam. She also trains, coaches, and writes a monthly column for O, the Oprah Magazine. Beck has been called "the best-known life coach in America" by Psychology Today for good reason--she is wise, insightful, funny, aware, and capable of helping us tap into our own wordless inner knowing to make the most important discovery we could ever make: the knowledge of what to do with our "wild and precious life."

----------

Please note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Spirituality & Health Magazine
http://www.spirituality-health.com/spirit/
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Morris, Kristine. "Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want." Spirituality & Health Magazine, vol. 15, no. 3, May-June 2012, p. 82. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A301281912/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3002f022. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025.

Martha Beck; DIANA, HERSELF; Cynosure Publishing (Fiction: Literary) 24.95 ISBN: 9781944264000

Byline: Stephanie Bucklin

In an artful book that questions reality and perception, Martha Beck offers a portrait of a woman at the brink of both despair and discovery. Diana Archer is a single, struggling mother who embarks to the Sierras Oscuras National Forest in California under the influence of famous, charismatic reality TV star and life coach Roy Richards. But when Diana is left abandoned in the forest, her story takes a sharp turn, and she finds herself questioning both her own perceptions and the strange journey "home" that she must undertake.

Most unusually, Diana is confronted with a talking wild boar that promises to lead her out of her dire situation, but Diana's journey is far from a straightforward trek back to Los Angeles. Is the animal real, or a psychological projection? Where is home? And most importantly, how will Diana have changed when she gets there?

Diana, Herself is a creative and unique novel of self-discovery written by an author not afraid to push the boundaries of her narrative. Offbeat and enjoyable, it is a captivating work in an irreverent voice that is perfect for those interested in their own psychological awakenings. Ideal for fans who are curious about the connections of literature with mental and spiritual themes and discoveries.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Foreword Magazine, Inc.
http://www.forewordmagazine.com
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Bucklin, Stephanie. "Diana, Herself; An Allegory of Awakening." ForeWord, 27 May 2016. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A453659183/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e68211ed. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025.

The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self. By Martha Beck. Apr. 2021. 352p. Penguin, $26 (9781984881489). 158.1.

Integrity, as defined by popular author and life coach Beck, means experiencing "unity of intention, fascination, and purpose." Using Dante's The Divine Comedy as an armature, Beck likens searching for one's true self to Dante's journey. One begins in the "dark wood of error," the place where you question your life's path and often suffer emotional and physical distress. Along the way, teachers appear and guide you through the gates of hell, those thoughts that keep you focused fearfully on the future rather than enjoying the present. While Dante created three sections, Beck has four: woods, inferno, purgatory, and paradise. The deepest circles of hell are reserved for those who lie, and Beck emphasizes the necessity of truth-telling even if it ruptures relationships. The road eventually leads toward the goal of peace. Beck freely shares her own journey and challenges pilgrims to face up to fears and embrace their inner guides. Frequent quizzes and questions help steer readers through the work needed to find their true selves, and many will be moved by Beck's sincerity and lucid techniques.--Candace Smith

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Smith, Candace. "The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 14, 15 Mar. 2021, p. 19. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A656303953/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7c56a2e3. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025.

GAYLE KING: We`re going to begin this hour with something that you`re going to see only on CBS MORNINGS, I have to say we really do love when that happens.

Oprah is revealing the latest selection for her Book Club. This month`s pick, you could say is a bit of a departure for her. The author shares her life journey to help readers find their own most fulfilling path in life.

Lead national correspondent, that`s David Begnaud sat down with the author, and with Oprah who said, "I`m so glad I get to talk to David," to hear all about it.

(Begin VT)

DAVID BEGNAUD: Good morning. I`m so excited to have this conversation. I`ve got the book in my hand and the lady who made the pick on the other end of the line.

Joining us now from Hawaii is Oprah. I have to tell you in reading the book, Oprah, there were so many aha moments for me happening left and right.

OPRAH WINFREY (Talk show host): Same for me. That`s why I chose it. I read it and there were so many aha`s I thought, "Wow, wouldn`t it be great if I could choose this for Book Club," and then thought, "No, it`s not a novel. But why not?" I get to do what I want.

So the next book is "The Way of Integrity" by Martha Beck, who has been a spiritual counselor guide for me for years with "O" Magazine, and has shared her words of wisdom over the years and has really compiled it all in this wonderful book that I think that is so needed and meaningful for our time, "The Way of Integrity" by Martha Beck.

DAVID BEGNAUD: Well said, and joining us now is Martha. How does it feel to hear Oprah rave like that about the book?

MARTHA BECK (Author "The Way of Integrity"): I don`t know. I left my body about five minutes ago, I`ll let you know later.

It is, I think the greatest honor I`ve ever felt.

DAVID BEGNAUD: Let`s talk about "The Way of Integrity," the title of the book. What is the way of integrity?

MARTHA BECK: It`s an alignment with every part of one`s own self. So there are different ways we make meaning -- body, heart, mind, and spirit -- and when all of those are in harmony with each other, it is like a machine in structural integrity, right?

A plane in structural integrity can fly. If its parts are misaligned, it can`t fly, it may crash, it may not take off. And when our parts are misaligned, when we are not integrity, one thing, but when we`re divided from ourselves in duplicity or multiplicity, we don`t fly either.

DAVID BEGNAUD: And Oprah in picking the book, the fact that it wasn`t a novel, was there something about that you felt was right for this moment, this time that we`re living in?

OPRAH WINFREY: Well, one of the things that I think we`re missing in this moment is integrity in many phases of our lives. And I think that that starts with each individual, instead of trying to tackle the world`s integrity, I think it starts with each person looking within themselves and it is about aligning with the truth of you.

You know, I pride myself on being a person of integrity and as I was reading, I was thinking about the ways in which I am not. You know, the little white lies you tell, the conversations you have that are really where you`re not 100 percent fully present there.

MARTHA BECK: And every single one of us were born in perfect integrity, but we get pressured before we can even talk to do things that aren`t maybe in alignment with our nature.

So most people who are out of integrity are trying very hard to be good, and they followed the culture, whatever their culture is -- their family, their ethnicity, their religion -- they are following that sometimes away from their truth, the expression of their true nature, and they get split and suffering is the inevitable result.

DAVID BEGNAUD: One of the things that Martha teaches in her book is about soul teachers. Soul teachers are sometimes the irreverent loud people who we kind of tell to get out of the room because they`re not conforming to what the rest of the room thinks is right.

MARTHA BECK: Yes, they may not be loud, but they`re weird and here is why.

A person who is in complete integrity is by definition different from the culture and that is the definition of weird, but those are the people who can break the illusions of culture in our own psyches and teach us to find the truth within ourselves.

DAVID BEGNAUD: And I love the line where you say, "The soul teacher outside of you will bow to the soul teacher within you."

MARTHA BECK: Always, always, every single real soul teacher will tell you ultimately, you are the source.

DAVID BEGNAUD: You talk about your truth, and you write in the book about leaving the Mormon Church.

MARTHA BECK: Yes.

DAVID BEGNAUD: And coming out as a lesbian.

MARTHA BECK: Yes.

DAVID BEGNAUD: What has that done for you?

MARTHA BECK: Oh, my goodness, talk about leaving culture and being weird and everybody is saying get out of the room. It`s the most liberating thing that could happen. Are you kidding?

I had grown up Mormon, I had never considered myself gay. I was going to be a good girl according to my culture, and I was really -- my mind was fully in it.

So when I was 29, I decided I wasn`t happy, I wasn`t happy. But they told me that the truth would set me free. So I decided when I was 29, on New Year`s Eve, that I would not tell a single lie for a calendar year and I kept that resolution.

And I ended up leaving the religion. I realized I was gay. So there went my marriage. I didn`t like my job, quit that. My family of origin, out the window. But at the same time, there was a wholeness growing deep inside me that I had never felt before.

OPRAH WINFREY: In all of my years of talking to people, there are so many times when people are wanting things and wanting a life that really isn`t designed for them, but they want it because the culture says you`re supposed to have it, and she speaks so profoundly about what you want versus what you really need to make yourself happy.

Martha, will you share with our with the audience -- the CBS audience -- here what you`re talking about how peace is really are home, and when you start even saying that to yourself, how it changes immediately, emotionally, how you feel in your body.

MARTHA BECK: So I`ve coached literally thousands of people all over the world, all stations of life. What I`ve found is that every person I`ve worked with -- murderers, beggars, billionaires -- they all feel an alignment with their sense of truth when they say the phrase, "I am meant to live in peace."

So everybody out there who is watching this, think in your mind, "I am meant to live in peace. I am meant to live in peace." Experiment with believing that and feel how everything goes.

OPRAH WINFREY: Yes

MARTHA BECK: Because that`s true for every single one of us.

DAVID BEGNAUD: Oprah, what`s the book?

OPRAH WINFREY: "The Way of Integrity" by Martha Beck.

(End VT)

GAYLE KING: She is so excited about this book, and as we`ve been saying all morning, it is a very different pick for her because she always -- she doesn`t normally pick nonfiction books, but she said I started thinking it`s called Oprah`s Book Club. I`m Oprah, shouldn`t I pick what I like? She really, really likes this book because she thinks integrity is missing in many levels in our lives, and maybe this book will be a helpful and hopeful reminder to others.

DAVID BEGNAUD: You know, Martha revealed something else to us. She said that she is almost 60 and she is raising a one-year-old with her current wife, Ro, and her former partner, Karen. And they`re all co-parenting under the same roof with Martha`s older son, Adam.

And it`s a modern family, so she said she wrote about it in the book, but she said the editors asked her to take it out.

GAYLE KING: Why?

NATE BURLESON: Why?

DAVID BEGNAUD: Because they thought it was too much information. And I thought: Wow, wait a minute. Here is this way-finder guru, Martha Beck that is talking about how we can live our purpose toward a true life --

NATE BURLESON: Embracing your truth.

DAVID BEGNAUD: And she is being told, you`re a little too much.

BURNETT: It`s too much.

DAVID BEGNAUD: Yes, it`s a little too much.

TONY DOKOUPIL: That`s the culture.

DAVID BEGNAUD: And I thought: Whoa.

GAYLE KING: And you said, "I can`t wait to tell it."

DAVID BEGNAUD: And you know what`s funny? Well, no, first of all, I got her blessing.

GAYLE KING: Yes, of course you did.

DAVID BEGNAUD: And she gave it.

GAYLE KING: Yes.

DAVID BEGNAUD: But she said to me after she told Oprah and I in the interview, she said, asking -- when you ask the question, and I said it, I felt free.

GAYLE KING: David --

NATE BURLESON: Because she addressed it.

GAYLE KING: David, I like to "I am meant to live in peace."

DAVID BEGNAUD: Just repeat it five times

GAYLE KING: I mean, just hearing that, for everybody. Yes. .I like that.

DAVID BEGNAUD: That`s right.

GAYLE KING: I like that a lot.

NATE BURLESON: I love that. That is an awesome book.

DAVID BEGNAUD: That`s right.

GAYLE KING: Thank you, David.

DAVID BEGNAUD: Thank you. Oprah. And don`t forget, tonight, "Oprah Daily" livestreaming.

GAYLE KING: That`s right.

DAVID BEGNAUD: Q&A with Oprah and Martha.

GAYLE KING: And Martha, that`s right.

DAVID BEGNAUD: That`s right.

GAYLE KING: I was supposed to say that and I forgot.

NATE BURLESON: That`s all right.

DAVID BEGNAUD: Throwing you a lifeline.

GAYLE KING: I forgot. No, so, I thank you. Oprah always loves talking to you.

We should tell you that Oprah will be speaking a little bit later on with Martha Beck. You can watch the streaming event at oprahdaily.com.

NATE BURLESON: Good job, Gayle.

GAYLE KING: Yes. Sometimes I need a reminder.

Right now, it is 8:11, exactly. Time to check your local weather.

(LOCAL WEATHER)

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

END

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"Oprah Chooses 'The Way Of Integrity' For Next Book Club Selection." CBS Mornings, 8 Feb. 2022. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A843643765/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=544c8ce9. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025.

Beck, Martha. Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose. The Open Field. Jan. 2025.336p. ISBN 9780593656389. $30. SELF-HELP

In this new book from one of the most celebrated life coaches writing today, anxiety becomes something of a cage that, when acknowledged and replaced, generates curiosity, creativity, and a life lived on purpose. Beck (The Way of Integrity) invites readers to join her in what she terms "the open field," a space beyond fear, shame, loneliness, and judgment. She distills three facts about anxiety (how it spirals, how society amplifies it, and how it can only end if it is replaced) before laying out an approach that moves from the creature to the creative and, finally, creation, or that elusive flow. Beck draws on real stories of individuals discovering that their anxiety is, in fact, a natural response to decidedly unnatural social forces. Her turns of phrase make her points as clever as they are clear (for instance, she titles a chapter the "Nuts and Bolts of Why You Go Nuts and Want To Bolt"), without ever putting cuteness over content. Unlike typical discussions of flight-or-fight, reptile brains, and Paleolithic responses to being chased by a tiger, Beck's metaphors feel tailored to the individual, yet also universal. VERDICT In this straightforward yet sophisticated work, Beck once again demonstrates why Oprah Winfrey has called her "one of the smartest women I know."--Emily Bowles

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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Bowles, Emily. "Beck, Martha. Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose." Library Journal, vol. 150, no. 1, Jan. 2025, p. 28. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A824165249/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=311700a9. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025.

Boone, Lucille M. "Beck, Martha. Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life, No Matter What!" Library Journal, vol. 133, no. 5, 15 Mar. 2008, p. 81. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A177829611/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d8dd932a. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025. Haggas, Carol. "Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaiming Your True Nature." Booklist, vol. 108, no. 8, 15 Dec. 2011, p. 2. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A275850667/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0cd96f77. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025. Morris, Kristine. "Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want." Spirituality & Health Magazine, vol. 15, no. 3, May-June 2012, p. 82. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A301281912/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3002f022. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025. Bucklin, Stephanie. "Diana, Herself; An Allegory of Awakening." ForeWord, 27 May 2016. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A453659183/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e68211ed. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025. Smith, Candace. "The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 14, 15 Mar. 2021, p. 19. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A656303953/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7c56a2e3. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025. "Oprah Chooses 'The Way Of Integrity' For Next Book Club Selection." CBS Mornings, 8 Feb. 2022. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A843643765/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=544c8ce9. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025. Bowles, Emily. "Beck, Martha. Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose." Library Journal, vol. 150, no. 1, Jan. 2025, p. 28. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A824165249/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=311700a9. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025.

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