Dr Martha Beck: What If Success Isn’t What You Think It Is?

**Martha Beck** (0:03)
When I decided not to lie at all, and that meant that my entire religion turned against me, and when I wrote about it years later, they started a hate bomb campaign to Oprah, people sending emails from all over the world to say I was a bad person and she should fire me.
And her response was to put me on the show and stand with me on the stage and say that my column in Oprah magazine was the first thing she read every month. You know, that took courage and that took grace. I can't say enough good about her.

**Aleda** (0:32)
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Dr. Martha Beck PhD is a best-selling author, coach and speaker. She's spent a lifetime offering powerful, practical and entertaining teachings that help people improve every aspect of their lives. Martha holds three Harvard degrees in social science, and Oprah Winfrey has called her one of the smartest women she knows. She's a New York Times best-selling author of nine books and one of America's best-known life coaches, having trained thousands of coaches worldwide through her own methodology. As author Julia Cameron put it, Martha Beck writes like a wizard, her magic trick is turning people into their true selves. Martha shares her work through two brilliant podcasts, The Gathering Room and Bewildered, reaching a global audience that are dedicated to her work. Martha, it's a great privilege to spend some time with us, Warnie. Thank you.

**Martha Beck** (1:53)
Oh my goodness. Thank you. You just made my year.

**Aleda** (1:58)
As I said before we started recording, it takes a bit for me to impress my wife Beck and she was as excited as anyone that I was going to have a time with you on the podcast today. Can I start with your life's work? You've spent so much time studying what helps people to live their best lives essentially.
What do you think the misconception people have about what a happy and successful life actually is?

**Martha Beck** (2:21)
I think most of it is looking outside yourself, looking at the social markers of success and happiness. I've coached so many people who've gotten to very high levels of success and happiness in the world's terms and they feel hollow and empty and pointless.
So my whole perspective is you've got your life's purpose inside you, you tend to get distracted by socialization and finding your way back to your own truth is the way to move forward into not just a successful life, but a life that is yours to succeed at.

**Aleda** (2:53)
So there seems to be a fear, Martha, for people around living a more authentic and meaningful life. What would you remove from people in that fear sense, and why do you think people are nervous to sort of explore exactly what you said?

**Martha Beck** (3:07)
Well, I know why they're nervous to explore it.
When I was 29, I made a New Year's resolution not to lie for a year, not once, not in any way. And I kept that resolution, and my entire life blew up. But I found myself, I mean, it was a fair trade. But I ended up losing almost everything. I left my religion of origin that I'd grown up with. That meant my whole religion, I grew up in a very religious community. That meant they were all kind of incommunicado after that.
Ended up leaving academia, which was my profession, leaving pretty much everything, really. And it wasn't fun. I got a therapist during that time and she said, my problem was that I keep my New Year's resolutions.
But it came out okay, right? I'm very, very happy that all of that happened. What I tell other people to do is take it very easy.
You're not wrong. People will think you're strange or maybe even bad if you start living your own life, right from your integrity. But if you change just a bit, I call them one-degree turns, if you're going to fly a plane 10,000 miles or 10,000 kilometers, and you change by one degree, like every few kilometers, it won't feel like that big a change, but you'll end up in a completely different place. So do what I did, but not as fast.