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

Product Details

Synopsis

Martha Beck’s remarkable success in helping people to change their lives has won her accolades everywhere from National Public Radio to USA TODAY. She made multiple appearances on Oprah and Good Morning America for the hardcover edition of Steering by Starlight, which now offers readers a powerful set of new tools—fresh coping strategies based on cutting-edge research in psychiatry and neurology—that will help them overcome obstacles and set their lives on course. Dr. Beck’s trademark humor and empathy are at the heart of her gift for helping people who feel disconnected from their true sense of purpose: to locate meaning in their lives. Utilizing the same methods that have proven most effective with her private clients, Dr. Beck reconnects readers with their authentic needs and desires. Whether a person is seeking better relationships, more focused career direction, or a more harmonious lifestyle, Steering by Starlight’s hilarious and touching anecdotes, case studies, and practical 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 best-selling author of Finding Your Own North Star, Expecting Adam, and The Four-Day Win, she lives in Phoenix.