Martha Beck
- World-Renowned Industry Leader
Featured
Life Expert
Martha Beck Quick Facts
- Main Areas
- Life Design; Career Change; Listening to Your Heart
- Best Sellers
- “Expecting Adam”; “Finding Your Own North Star”
- Career Focus
- Author; Life Coach; Magazine Columnist
- Affiliation
- Martha Beck, Inc.
Martha Beck, Ph.D., is an innovator in life design and a monthly columnist at O: The Oprah Magazine. She is the founder of Martha Beck, Inc., a life coaching firm that helps clients redirect their careers and lifestyles. Martha was a business consultant, a researcher at the Harvard Business School, and a professor at the International School of Business before becoming a life coach.
Martha left the academic environment and embraced change with the birth of her son Adam, who has Down’s syndrome. This experience inspired her New York Times best-selling book, Expecting Adam. She also authored the New York Times bestseller Finding Your Own North Star. In her writing, Martha says that your heart is trying to tell you what you need, and listening makes a difference.
Martha earned a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University. By the time Adam was born, aware of his disability, she says she “had to unlea virtually everything Harvard taught [her] about what is precious and what is garbage.” The mother of three children, Martha lectures and conducts seminars for a diverse clientele that includes medical professionals, magazine sales forces, boards of education, and business executives.
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Favorite Quotes & Thoughts from Martha Beck
• Whoever said love is blind is dead wrong. Love is the only thing that lets us see each other with the remotest accuracy.
• Angels come in many shapes and sizes, and most of them are not invisible.
• You’ll never be hurt as much by being open as you have been hurt by remaining closed.
Contacting Martha Beck
ADDRESS: P.O. Box 535
428 E. Thunderbird Rd.
Phoenix, AZ 85022
PHONE: 602-789-9367
WEBSITE: www.marthabeck.com
How to get started
As far as Self Improvement goes, I recommend that you start with Martha Beck’s book, Finding Your Own North Star. So what is a North Star? Martha writes, “Explorers depend on the North Star 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.”
Finding Your Own North Star is based on the premise that each of us has two sides: the essential self and the social self. The essential self contains several compasses that continuously point toward your North Star. The social self is the set of skills that actually carry you toward your goal. In the first chapter of her book, Martha illustrates this by sharing examples like: “Your essential self wants passionately to become a doctor; the social self struggles through organic chemistry and applies to medical school.”
The system functions beautifully as long as the essential and social selves are communicating freely with each other and working in perfect synchrony. However, few people are lucky enough to experience such inner harmony. In Finding Your Own North Star, Martha will teach you how to read your internal compasses and move towards this inner harmony. She gives you a step by-step program to reach your own ideal life and includes exercises, questionnaires, and case studies to help you along the way.
Other highlights
National Public Radio called Martha “the best-known life coach in America.” According to Martha herself, she is learning to listen and is lucky enough to share that with millions of people via print, television, or in person. Her Polaris Sessions (Claiming Your North Star) are focused, two-day sessions that help you claim the life you were meant to live. She directs them personally, each with a group of 5 to 8 people in a private yet comfortable setting.