Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want [Hardcover]

Martha Beck (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 27, 2011

Many people feel called to help others and change the world, but they just don’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.
 
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 “inner team” and an external “tribe” 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.
 
Heartfelt, inspirational, and filled with “a-ha” moments, Finding Your Way in a Wild New World provides the map for the unconventional life path that leads to miraculous change.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

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

Review

“Henderson’s performance is totally in sync with the worldly author’s let-the-dogs-out energy. This subtle but powerful advice on a variety of lifestyle choices will raise everyone’s expectations of what life can be.”
       —AudioFile (AudioFile) --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Atria Books (December 27, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1451624484
• ISBN-13: 978-1451624489
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #43,994 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Martha Beck is a writer and "life coach" who specializes in helping people design satisfying and meaningful life experiences. She holds a bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies and master's and Ph.D. degrees in sociology, all from Harvard University.

She worked as a research associate at Harvard Business School, studying career paths and life-course changes in today's economic and social environment. Before becoming a life coach, Dr. Beck taught sociology, social psychology, organizational behaviour, 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 the 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 her newest book, "Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaiming Your True Nature". Dr. Beck has also been a contributing editor for many popular magazines, including "Real Simple" and "Redbook", and is currently a columnist for "O, the Oprah Magazine".

More information can be found at marthabeck.com, including Dr. Beck's lively blog posts and video blogs, books, speaking appearances, and life coaching strategies and suggestions.

Dr. Beck lives in Central California with her family.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

146 of 149 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful tools for living the wayfinder's life December 27, 2011

By Elizabeth H. Cottrell

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear" is a truth that will manifest itself over and over as this exciting new book is read and shared and read again. The number of markers and underlines and margin notes in my preview copy are testaments to the fact I was ready. I devoured it and now am going back to start practicing the many exercises. The book's purpose is to help you more clearly identify "what you should be doing with your one wild and precious life."

The author, Martha Beck, has outstanding educational and life experience credentials for writing this book. It is both a sharing of her own life journey as well as a manifesto for anyone ready to embrace their own best life. With a B.A. in East Asian Studies and master's and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from Harvard University, Beck is a trained observer and analyst. Her coaching specialty is helping people design satisfying and meaningful life experiences. She first got on my radar screen as a columnist for Oprah Magazine, where I am regularly impressed with her no-nonsense, delightfully humorous approach to issues about life's questions, fears, and psychological roadblocks.

I recently read Beck's bestselling book EXPECTING ADAM, the story of her 1987-88 pregnancy and giving birth to a Downs syndrome child (new edition in 2011). Its subtitle is "A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic." The unabashed revelation of her own fears, neuroses, and personal/professional challenges at the time was both heart-wrenching and inspiring. Martha has known and overcome tragedy, sadness, and self-limiting thoughts. She is an excellent guide for empowering others to overcome their own life issues.... FINDING YOUR WAY IN A WILD NEW WORLD is her ultimate guidebook, the best of her teaching and philosophy in one zinger of a book.

FINDING YOUR WAY IN A WILD NEW WORLD is not going to resonate with everyone. Some will dismiss it as just another pop cultural self-help book. Others will use terms like "woo-woo" and "New Age nonsense." They'd be selling it short. I am a devout Christian with an insatiable curiosity and open mind about spirituality and human potential. This book was filled with research-based findings on the power of our connectedness with each other and with all living things in nature (flora and fauna), and I believe people of any faith will find it enriches, rather than contradicts, their core beliefs.

Beck includes many practical exercises for each section of her book, all designed to exercise the parts of our brain that we don't use enough, to train ourselves to focus our attention, and to tap into the energy that is mostly likely to allow us to find and cultivate our own best selves. They're designed to get us out of our mental ruts!

Here are some hints that this book might be perfect for you right now:
* If you feel a yearning that you can't identify or suppress.
* If you feel the need for clarity and purpose in your life.
* If you're afraid to do things that you think you'd love to do.
* If wild success and abysmal failure both scare you.
* If you feel fragmented with no clear focus in your life.
* If your wild fantasies seem impossible but won't let you go.
* If you feel you're about to explode with possibilities and potential but can't grab on to that one thing that feels just right.
* If you suspect your self-talk is holding you back.
* If you feel like you're bumping your head against one obstacle after another but you're certain there's something better on the other side.
* If you feel the world is changing so fast you can't keep up.
* If you feel stuck and unproductive.
* If you feel in need of emotional healing before you can move on to your real purpose of healing others.
* If you desperately want to make a difference with the rest of your life but don't know what on earth you that might "look like."

If any one of these rings true, you owe it to yourself to read this book. There is a generous excerpt available for free on Amazon. If it doesn't grab you by the time you finish reading those pages, either the book is not for you or the timing is not right in your life.

If the timing is right for you, you'll gain clarity, focus, and powerful tools for living abundantly in the best sense of the word. Read more ›

205 of 218 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars If you haven't yet read a Martha Beck book, don't choose this one as your first (or second) March 18, 2012

By Primrose Hill

Format:Hardcover

I read my first Martha Beck book about 13 years ago, and instantly admired her sense of humour, writing skill, down-to-earth personality, intelligence and academic achievements, and concern for other people. The more I've read by her, seen her on tv, etc., the more highly I've thought of her.

I haven't read all her books, skipping the one about her son Adam, the one about dieting, of course the Mormon-focussed one she wrote a long time ago with her (now-"out", now-ex) husband about overcoming addictions (including how to overcome being gay) (and now Martha is "out" as well, having lived with a female partner for many years, although I just learned about that side of her life last year, and I saw a 2011 interview of Beck by Oprah Winfrey during which Oprah learned about Martha's being gay, and Oprah was also quite shocked she had not known about this before, since they have worked together for many years).

I especially recommend her book _Finding Your Own North Star_. The follow-up _Steering By Starlight_ is okay, but kind of dips into the "woo-woo factor" more than most people are probably comfortable with (although I was fine with it myself).

Martha's writing can make me laugh, cry, marvel, and groan, often within the same few paragraphs.

[By the way, you can find a generous amount of her material for free on her personal website, and I think all of her monthly columns from the O Magazine archives are available at Oprah's website - many of them are well worth spending a few minutes on, if her writing style floats your boat.]

Therefore, I was looking forward to reading this, her latest book. I am disappointed in it. Not only because I expect so much from her, but because it's so... circular and woolly.... The subject matter is by definition hard to describe in words, but she is a better communicator than this. To me it felt like an early draft, filled with too many stories and metaphors and words, which normally gets whittled down into a tight, well-flowing, easy-to-follow manuscript before it is published.

Some of the negatives, in my opinion:

-Text was too long, didn't flow very well.

-There were too many stories of her experiences on the game preserve in South Africa.

-There was too much about animals (and willing them to appear in front of her). Too much about far-flung, expensive travels. I know she deeply enjoys both and that both are integral to her lifestyle and recent discoveries about the universe, but the repetitiveness marred the book for me.

-It felt like half-autobiography, half-self-help-guide, and the two parts didn't join together as smoothly, for me, as she obviously meant them to.

-The "practical" steps about how to be a healer/"wayfinder"/"mender"/etc. were scattered too much around the book, and the example tales that were meant to illuminate the practical steps were often so long and involved that I forgot what their purpose was.

-Sometimes, she assumes that readers have some prior scientific or esoteric knowledge they may not have, while at other times she explains things a bit too simply.

-She makes up some terms for some of her concepts, which makes sense because the typical terms in English do have a lot of preconceptions and emotion attached to them, but she then uses too many new terms for the same concept, and most of her new terms were just a shade too "cutesy" or something for me. The capitalization of various words, like Team and Imagine, began to grate on me too.

-She keeps saying, "my friend Noelle" or "my friend (whoever)", and there is a certain point when any reader is going to know that Noelle (or whoever) is, yes indeed, that same friend with the unusual name whom Martha has already mentioned 25 times. Are the people she refers to by-name-only not her friends? It felt a bit "adolescent".

-She is a bit obsessed with having slept in the same bed as Mandela, in the same resort as Mandela, having walked the same pathways in the game preserve as Mandela. It is interesting of course, and mentioning it once is fine, but after that, it's kind of pointless. [I used to work in the room Chopin died in, so slap me with a blue plaque. ;-)]

-She tells a few of the same life stories that she has told in other books, which most self-help authors do and it's no problem, but it occurred to me that each time that I've read several of these stories, new aspects have been unveiled (which she had been aware of from the start). I wish that, the first time I'd read her telling of her stories, I would have learned all about them, at least all the relevant information. I realize that she's been playing a delicate game, trying to write books that would appeal to and give comfort to (and not freak out) the public while she's been negotiating a complex and fraught emotional journey in her own life (leaving her religion, accusing her dad of abusing her as a child, being cut off by her family, getting divorced, drinking the mystical kool-aid so-to-speak, etc. etc.) But I do feel a bit misled, because I had thought that the original telling of the stories would have contained all the pertinent details. However, I know this is too much to ask of an autobiographical writer, especially one who doesn't want to push the public's boundaries so far that she isn't given a chance to express herself.

-It is interesting to see that about three different times in the book, she is quite critical about "New Age" people and she even mentions the film of "The Secret" (in all but title) in a disparaging way, even though I recall that she was a guest in at least one hour-long Oprah tv show which mainly lauded that film. I agree with her criticisms of certain magical thinking, and certain "New Age" topics, but then she turns around and keeps quoting Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, and that _Eat Pray Love_ woman as experts and guides for her way of thinking, as if they themselves weren't deeply New-Agey (and as if they were not all annoying and much less profound -- in my opinion, anyway! -- than the American public seems to find them). [I lost some respect for Martha when I realized she holds these people up as the ultimate sages -- but that's just me.]

-A reviewer on the Amazon UK site says that Beck doesn't veer into "law of attraction" stuff, but that IS precisely what she is talking about with her 4 steps. She doesn't call it "law of attraction". But it's pretty similar to it. Some of her steps remind me of steps from Chopra's book on it from about 8 or 10 years ago.

-She assumes that almost everyone reading the book is going to be a "healer" type of person, and does not go into any other archetypes or destinies (whatever you want to call it). She also assumes that every "healer's" life goal should be helping other people find joy. I don't have an opinion on it, but I wonder if it's that simple for every single person who determines that she/he has a "healer" personality.

-Although she said she's spent years researching magic, medicine men/women, shamen, ancient tribes, healers across the ages; and mentions many ideas, experiments, historical events, locations, and people, there are very few references in the book. The only references are to YouTube videos of antelopes jumping and that kind of thing. It's obviously not a textbook or a scientific journal article, but some selected references would have been welcome. Also, of course she mentions her sociology PhD, but historically and in modern times there has been a lot of study of these topics by countless anthropologists, folklorists, and even medical doctors (like Larry Dossey), which I'm not sure she mentioned at all in the book. I know this isn't meant to be an exhaustive review of the "magical" in human experience, but I found it to be a bit waffly and breezy.

-In her promotion of "magic", communing with animal spirits, opening right up to the universe, etc., I know that she is very well-meaning and feels that she knows all the ins and outs -- and she does give a few weak caveats about this throwing oneself wide open to all and sundry, such as beaming comforting, calming vibes to angry and hostile people and imagining a light surrounding you that will supposedly dissolve any bad vibes coming at you -- but it is my impression that she seriously downplays the potentially negative aspects of this sort of individual, amateur, unprotected dabbling. She does mention several times that the ancient tribal healers that she has studied went through decades and decades of training, mentorship, and so on before they were put in charge of this role for their social group -- yet she pulls out some of their "technologies", describes them in a woolly, convoluted way, and encourages her mainly-American, mainly-middle-class, mainly-untrained-in-this-realm readers to rush into these practices on their own with no personal backups in place in case something odd happens, with no broad understanding or training, with no previous experience with the "field". It's too simplistic, too rosy. I think it's not safe enough, spiritually, as described here.

-The subject of mystical, healing drugs (like the one she had, at least at one point, decided to take in a magic ritual led by a South American shaman, and ended up being affected by -- even though she didn't, apparently, ingest it) is complicated and I hardly know anything about it, but she seems to indicate that it's safe, brave, and normal to do this kind of thing without much preparation, and I am not sure that it ought to be that simple or that easy, nor that it is without any danger of side effects/lasting problems. [A fellow student from my university days took something like this and was injured physically and mentally and his life rapidly fell apart, never to be the same. But one can't extrapolate from just one example.] Serious, methodical, logical, educated, open-minded researchers like Dr. Andrew Weil (in his younger days) have researched deeply into this kind of thing, and of course this sort of hallucinatory drug use is engaged in by many folks around the world. However, I think it's only responsible to mention how to learn about the risks, the chemistry, the methods, the legality, the "spiritual" history, etc., if you are going to casually suggest doing this sort of thing for personal growth.

I think that Martha Beck is well-meaning and kind. She's brave, hard-working, and intelligent. She is usually a very good writer. She has an uncommon gift of making readers feel more normal, less alone, happier, calmer. But this book was a disappointment to me, and is my least favorite of her works that I've read. Read more ›

56 of 60 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Koren Motekaitis December 27, 2011

By Koren Motekaitis

Format:Hardcover

I was excited to read Martha's new book Finding Your Way in a Wild New World until I found out that it was about MAGIC. Oh no I thought would this be too woo woo? Would my clients now think I was crazy since I trained with Martha Beck and am one of her coaches? Would my radio listeners turn the dial and look for something else that really applied to their life?

Then I read the book. WOW! I invite you to go beyond the language that Martha uses in her book. Maybe you do not understand what Wordlessness means right now. But when you read the book and practice her tools you will experience and understand Wordlessness. Don't let the ideas or what you think MAGIC, WORDLESSNESS, or some of her other words Martha uses to stop you from at least exploring Martha's latest book. When I read this book I let go of my resistance to the language in her book and Martha opened up information and powerful experiences for me. Her book makes so much sense and her tools can help you.

And like all of Martha's other works she encourages you to test it out for yourself and see if it works. Don't just take her word for it since she is a best selling author and columnist in O, the Oprah magazine.

Unlike other self-help books where you ask yourself, "how can I REALLY apply this to my life?" Martha gives you tools that you can do while living your life in her latest book Finding Your Way In A Wild New World.

I rarely write book reviews eventhough I have used the reviews for 1,000s of books/items for years as a buyer and this time I decided to write a review, because maybe you are skeptical like I was and I wanted you to know that once I let go of my resistance, Martha's book gave me more insight and tools to help myself as well as my clients and listeners on my show.