Book Review: Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star. (2001)

"Pleasure and suffering are antithetical; joy and suffering are not. Anyone who's felt the pain of bearing a child, or pushed past physical limits in some athletic event, or struggled to learn difficult but powerful truths understands that suffering can be an integral part of the most profound joy. In fact, once the suffering has ended, having experienced it seems to magnify the capacity to feel pleasure and delight." (p. 210)

This rather Nietzschean sentiment is expressed by Martha Beck, a life-coach who has written a number of popular books.  Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live (2001) is one of her first self-help books. It deals with learning to read one's own "internal compasses", emotions, intuition and bodily sensations, in order to discover the next step in one's life path. It is very practical, methods-and-results oriented, with a number of anecdotes illustrating the principles. I find it highly compatible with Nathaniel Branden's approach to personal development, which I am also studying.



 "Getting in touch with one's feelings" has become a cliche, dating to the '70's subculture which preceded the New Age Movement. However, being clearly aware of one's internal signals is an indispensable prerequisite for independence and autonomy. This is especially true for those, such as LHP practitioners, who are in the process of breaking away from societal assumptions and expectations, and need to develop clear inner guidance to replace them. Jumping into the vacuum with no source of direction at all is a recipe for anomie, and this is what may have hijacked much of the 60's and 70's counterculture. Turning inward to find one's own answers is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced, and the journey along the way is often a bumpy one.

Beck details the four stages in the cycle of change, which she says everyone goes through repeatedly during their lifetimes. I'm not sure if this is true for "everyone" (see below on "Your Everybody"), but she does give a number of case studies from her life-coaching practice which show the characteristics of each stage and the transitions between them. Using this model, I personally find that I seem to blend aspects of multiple stages rather than being clearly in one or the other. Evidently some people are more linear and sequential in their growth process than others. At any rate, the model gives one food for thought, and reassurance that the more difficult periods will eventually come to an end.

The part of the book that I personally found the most useful was "Getting Everybody on Your Side", which is about one's personal Everybody, or "generalized other". According to Beck, many people harbor a notion of what "everybody" thinks based on just a few actual people. This was written back in 2001; I wonder if it is equally true in today's internet culture, where people are exposed to a huge variety of "others" daily on Facebook and other venues. Nonetheless, I found it quite valuable to contemplate my assumptions about who "everybody" is, and train myself to be more selective about whose opinions I will admit to my psychological inner forum.

Beck's style is often amusing and playful. I personally found her use of humour a bit overdone at times, but overall this book is enjoyable and easy to read.