Excerpt: 'Steering by Starlight'

Life coach Martha Beck guides people to the life they were meant to live.

ByABC News via logo
December 8, 2008, 6:59 AM

April 11, 2008 — -- So have you given up on your New Year's resolution again this year? Life coach Martha Beck says that doesn't make you lazy, it just means you're just not picking the right resolutions.

Beck's new book, "Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life, No Matter What," is all about finding your true goals in life and acheiving them.

Read an excerpt of "Steering by Starlight" below.

You can visit Martha Beck's Web site at www.marthabeck.com.

I know a man let's call him Gus whose nose is continuously attempting to turn itself into an ear. Gus's original nose was crushed in a car accident, and plastic surgeons rebuilt it by taking cartilage from one of his ears, sculpting it into the shape they needed, and grafting it to his nasal bridge. Their skill was amazing; you'd never notice anything unusual about Gus's remodeled schnozz.

However, that little bit of cartilage never forgot what it started out to be. Ever since the surgery, it's been trying to re-create the ear from which it was harvested. Gradually, as the years go by, it morphs into a delicate aural whorl, and Gus's doctors have to go back in and whittle it down again. But the cartilage is not discouraged. Before the procedure is over, it's already continuing its humble, inexorable ambition to regenerate its original form.

I can empathize with Gus's nose. I suspect you can, too. The fact that you're reading these words suggests that you're looking to find and follow the life you were meant to have: your highest and happiest possible destiny. This wouldn't be an issue if you already felt fully "on purpose" or if you lacked any sense of destiny at all.

I'm betting you're like many clients I've coached, people who feel that they aren't quite themselves, who continuously sense that they are trying to regain their true form but who have only the faintest inkling of what that might be. My goal in writing this book is to help you find your deepest sense of purpose to give you back to yourself, since you are the ultimate arbiter of your own fate. You don't need a book to do this. Whether or not you're consciously following your destiny, your destiny is always following you. But this book may well make the process quicker, cleaner, and easier.

Let me explain a little about why I venture to offer you advice about your life, which you know far better than I ever can. I'm a "life coach," part of a profession that popped up like a mushroom in the last few years of the 20th century. There's no standardization or regulation for life coaching. I have no idea what most people who go by that title actually do. I think of myself as the behavioral equivalent of a personal trainer. A therapist, like a physician, works with unwell people to restore them to health. I work with healthy people to help them achieve maximum "fitness" that is, well-being and quality of life.

Oddly enough, I knew my life-coaching destiny subconsciously even when I was young and life coaching hadn't been invented. At age 16, I filled out a scholarship application that asked me for a single-sentence summation of my mission in life. My younger sister suggested that I write, "My mission in life is to learn how to say, 'Hey, sailor, want to get lucky?' in every living language." But we lived in Utah, and I feared this would not be well received. So instead, I tossed out a random thought: "My mission in life is to help people bridge the gaps that separate them from their true selves, from one another, and from their destiny." Today, approximately 400 years later, I don't think I'd change that description. Our right lives ride in our cells, in our DNA, and they pop up to speak to us in idle moments, when we think we're just shooting the breeze.