“He says you’ll never be hurt as much by being open as you have been by remaining closed.”The
messenger is a school janitor with a master’s in art history who claims
to be channeling “from both sides of the veil.” “He” is Adam, a
three-year-old who has never spoken an intelligible word. And the
message is intended for Martha Beck, Adam’s mother, who doesn’t know
whether to make a mad dash for the door to escape a raving lunatic
(after all, how many conversations like this one can you have before you
stop getting dinner party invitations and start pushing a mop
yourself?) or accept another in a series of life lessons from an
impeccable but mysterious source.From the moment Martha and her
husband, John, accidentally conceived their second child, all hell broke
loose. They were a couple obsessed with success. After years of
matching IQs and test scores with less driven peers, they had two
Harvard degrees apiece and were gunning for more. They’d plotted out a
future in the most vaunted ivory tower of academe. But the dream had
begun to disintegrate. Then, when their unborn son, Adam, was diagnosed
with Down syndrome, doctors, advisers, and friends in the Harvard
community warned them that if they decided to keep the baby, they would
lose all hope of achieving their carefully crafted goals. Fortunately,
that’s exactly what happened.Expecting Adam is a poignant,
challenging, and achingly funny chronicle of the extraordinary nine
months of Martha’s pregnancy. By the time Adam was born, Martha and John
were propelled into a world in which they were forced to redefine
everything of value to them, put all their faith in miracles, and trust
that they could fly without a net. And it worked.Martha’s
riveting, beautifully written memoir captures the abject terror and
exhilarating freedom of facing impending parentdom, being forced to
question one’s deepest beliefs, and rewriting life’s rules. It is an
unforgettable celebration of the everyday magic that connects human
souls to each other.

“The North Star-Stella Polaris-is a fixed point that can always be used to figure out which way you’re headed. Explorers and mariners can depend on Polaris when there are no other landmarks in sight. The same relationship exists between you and your right life, the ultimate realization of your potential for happiness. I believe that a knowledge of that perfect life sits inside you just as the North Star sits in its unaltering spot. You may think you’re utterly lost, but brush away the leaves, wait for the clouds to clear, and you’ll see your destiny shining as brightly as ever; the fixed point in the constantly changing constellations of your life.” -Martha Beck
As the creator of Life Designs, Inc., Martha Beck has helped hundreds of clients find their own North Star and figure out how to fulfill their potential and create joyful lives through her lectures, seminars, and one-on-one counseling. In this book, she shares her step-by-step program that will guide you to fulfill your own potential.

Many people feel called to help others and change the world, but they just don#8217;t know how to fulfill their potential. They have the creativity and passion, but often get lost, not knowing how to direct their energies. Now, popular life coach Martha Beck shows how readers can find their calling in service and healing-while realizing their destiny.#160;With a sparkling, compassionate, and often irreverent style, Beck draws from a combination of ancient wisdom and modern science to help readers consciously embrace vital skills that may be embedded in our DNA and are now made accessible again. Beck shows how to put together an #8220;inner team#8221; and an external #8220;tribe#8221; of people with the same aims and outlines four simple Steps for Transformation: Wordlessness, Oneness, Imagination, and Creation. With step-by-step instructions and guided reflections, Martha shows readers how to drop into the wordless state of communion with nature and self, how to connect with the oneness between self and the universe, how to be empowered by the spark of inspiration, and finally, how to take action and realize their creative potential to make a lasting impact in their own lives and the world around them.#160;Heartfelt, inspirational, and filled with #8220;a-ha#8221; moments, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World provides the map for the unconventional life path that leads to miraculous change.

Leaving the Saints is an unforgettable memoir about one woman’s spiritual quest and journey toward faith. As “Mormon royalty” within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Martha Beck was raised in a home frequented by the Church’s high elders—known as the apostles—and her existence was framed by their strict code of conduct. Wearing her sacred garments, she married in a secret temple ceremony—but only after two Mormon leaders ascertained that her “past contained no flirtation with serious sins, such as committing murder or drinking coffee.” She went to church faithfully with the other brothers and sisters of her ward. When her son was born with Down syndrome, she and her husband left their graduate programs at Harvard to return to Provo, Utah, where they knew the supportive Mormon community would embrace them.

However, soon after Martha began teaching at Brigham Young University, she began to see firsthand the Church’s ruthlessness as it silenced dissidents and masked truths that contradicted its published beliefs. Most troubling of all, she was forced to face her history of sexual abuse by one of the Church’s most prominent authorities. This book chronicles her difficult decision to sever her relationship with the faith that had cradled her for so long and to confront and forgive the person who betrayed her so deeply.

This beautifully written, inspiring memoir explores the powerful yearning toward faith. It offers a rare glimpse inside one of the world’s most secretive religions while telling a profoundly moving story of personal courage, survival, and the transformative power of spirituality.

Leaving the Saints is an unforgettable memoir about one woman’s spiritual quest and journey toward faith. As “Mormon royalty” within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Martha Beck was raised in a home frequented by the Church’s high elders—known as the apostles—and her existence was framed by their strict code of conduct. Wearing her sacred garments, she married in a secret temple ceremony—but only after two Mormon leaders ascertained that her “past contained no flirtation with serious sins, such as committing murder or drinking coffee.” She went to church faithfully with the other brothers and sisters of her ward. When her son was born with Down syndrome, she and her husband left their graduate programs at Harvard to return to Provo, Utah, where they knew the supportive Mormon community would embrace them.

However, soon after Martha began teaching at Brigham Young University, she began to see firsthand the Church’s ruthlessness as it silenced dissidents and masked truths that contradicted its published beliefs. Most troubling of all, she was forced to face her history of sexual abuse by one of the Church’s most prominent authorities. This book chronicles her difficult decision to sever her relationship with the faith that had cradled her for so long and to confront and forgive the person who betrayed her so deeply.

This beautifully written, inspiring memoir explores the powerful yearning toward faith. It offers a rare glimpse inside one of the world’s most secretive religions while telling a profoundly moving story of personal courage, survival, and the transformative power of spirituality.

Author of Oprah’s Book Club Pick—The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self

Martha Beck’s work as a life coach has been featured on Oprah and has earned her accolades in outlets from National Public Radio to USA Today. More important, her trademark wisdom, empathy, and humor have changed thousands of lives, helping people who felt disconnected from their true sense of purpose to locate meaning in their lives and change.

Now, in the tradition of her bestseller Finding Your Own North Star, Martha Beck reconnects listeners with their authentic hopes, needs, and desires in Steering by Starlight. Beck brings together cutting-edge research in psychiatry and neurology, practical exercises and the step-by-step process she uses with her private clients to offer powerful new methods for solving problems that beset every one of us.

Whether you’re seeking better relationships, more focused career direction, specific fitness goals, or a more harmonious lifestyle, Steering by Starlight‘s colorful and touching anecdotes, case studies and exercises will give you the tools you need to become your own guide and point the way to an authentic, rewarding life.

Author of Oprah’s Book Club Pick—The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self

The bestselling author of Finding Your Own North Star reveals how to change the way you eat, four days at a time!

Everyone knows how to lose weight: eat less, move more. But so many dieters who know what to do still don’t do what they know. Why not? Because they don’t understand the brain-body dynamics of weight loss. Now, cutting-edge research has revealed that millions of dieters following typical weight loss programs are actually programming themselves to get fatter.

In The Four-Day Win, Harvard-trained Oprah Magazine columnist Martha Beck, Ph.D., reverses this trend and teaches dieters to get lean from the brain outward. The Four-Day Win tells how to reverse the brain-body programming that makes you fat, so you can create a new, leaner and healthier body…for good.

As empathetic and funny as she is informative, Martha Beck observes that:
—Traditional dieting relies on the ability to go numb or to override physical and emotional feelings.
‚ÄîOvereating is a self-calming compulsion similar to OCD — dieters turn to food (and lots of it) when they’re deprived of comfort.
—Overweight people can reverse the brain-body programming that is making them fat. Instead of attacking their bodies, they can learn to support them.

Dr. Beck helps you to think thin and end your compulsion to overeat, and includes a Jump-Start weight-loss program that will help you shed pounds in the best way, both psychologically and physically. An inspiring and enlightening challenge to everything you think you know about losing weight, The Four-Day Win provides you with an easy and fail-proof way to change your life.

Discover a menu of ten behaviors you can add to your way of living and thinking to enhance every day’s journey through the unpredictable terrain of your existence.

Add these behaviors gradually and watch your life become steadily more vivid and satisfying. Or you can go on a “crash Joy Diet” to help you navigate life’s emergencies. The ten menu items are:

• Nothing: Do nothing for fifteen minutes a day. Stop mindlessly chasing goals and figure out which goals are worth going after.

• Truth: Create a moment of truth to help you unmask what you’re hiding—from others and from yourself.

• Desire: Identify, articulate, and explore at least one of your heart’s desires—and learn how to let yourself want what you want.

• Creativity: Learn six new ways to develop at least one new idea to help you obtain your heart’s desire.

• Risk: Take one baby step toward reaching your goal. The only rule is it has to scare the pants off you.

• Treats: Give yourself a treat for every risk you take and two treats just because you’re you. No exceptions. No excuses.

• Play: Take a moment to remember your real life’s work and differentiate it from the games you play to achieve it. Then play wholeheartedly.

• Laughter: Laugh at least thirty times a day. Props encouraged.

• Connection: Use your Joy Diet skills to interact with someone who matters to you.

• Feasting: Enjoy at least three square feasts a day, with or without food.

No matter what your long-term goals are, The Joy Diet, written with Martha Beck’s inimitable blend of wisdom, practical guidance, and humor, will help you achieve the immediate gift of joyful living in the here and now. Begin your journey today.

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK

Bestselling author, life coach, and sociologist Martha Beck explains why “integrity”—needed now more than ever in these tumultuous times—is the key to a meaningful and joyful life

As Martha Beck says in her book, “Integrity is the cure for psychological suffering. Period.”

In The Way of Integrity, Beck presents a four-stage process that anyone can use to find integrity, and with it, a sense of purpose, emotional healing, and a life free of mental suffering. Much of what plagues us—people pleasing, staying in stale relationships, negative habits—all point to what happens when we are out of touch with what truly makes us feel whole.

Inspired by The Divine Comedy, Beck uses Dante’s classic hero’s journey as a framework to break down the process of attaining personal integrity into small, manageable steps. She shows how to read our internal signals that lead us towards our true path, and to recognize what we actually yearn for versus what our culture sells us.

With techniques tested on hundreds of her clients, Beck brings her expertise as a social scientist, life coach and human being to help readers to uncover what integrity looks like in their own lives. She takes us on a spiritual adventure that not only will change the direction of our lives, but also bring us to a place of genuine happiness.