Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life, No Matter What! by Martha Beck

Synopsis

In the tradition of her bestseller, Finding Your Own North Star, Oprah Magazine columnist Martha Beck reconnects readers with their best destinies. Described as one of the best-known life coaches in America in media such as Psychology Today, NPR, and USA Today, Martha Beck has demonstrated a rare gift for helping people whose lives have gone off course find their way back to authentic, rewarding lives. Now, in Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life, No Matter What!, Martha Beck describes the step-by-step process she uses with her private clients to help them navigate the terrain of their best lives. Bringing together cutting-edge research in psychiatry, neurology, and related fields in an accessible, substantive, original way, Dr. Beck offers powerful new methods for solving the problems that beset ordinary people. Using her trademark wisdom, empathy, and engaging style, she connects readers with fresh, never-before published strategies that have proven most effective and efficient for the hundreds of people she has coached. For readers who have found their North Stars, this book will be an invaluable tool to stay the course and overcome obstacles.  For those who still feel adrift, it will provide a way to find true North and follow the path of best destiny. Dr. Beck identifies three stages along the path to recapturing a satisfying life:-“the stargazer” helps readers understand why it’s so easy to lose themselves and offers strategies for sighting their North Star-“the mapmaker” uses this newly clarified perspective to evaluate one’s situation and plot a course forupcoming years-“the pathfinder” discusses the adventures that may be encountered as one travels along this new life course Whether it’s seeking better relationships, more focused career direction, the achievement of specific fitness goals, or a more harmonious lifestyle, Steering by Starlight’s colorful anecdotes, case studies, and exercises will point the way. 

Lucille M. Boone - Library Journal

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.

Biography

MARTHA BECK, PHD, is a life coach and monthly columnist for O: The Oprah Magazine. She has taught career development at the American Graduate School of International Management and was research assistant to Dr. John Kotter at Harvard Business School. The author of the bestsellers Finding Your Own North Star and the memoir Expecting Adam, and The Four-Day Win, she lives in Phoenix, Arizona.