Life Coach? You May Want to Read this Review

You may have heard of best-selling author Martha Beck through her advice column in Oprah Magazine or through her many books: Expecting Adam, The Joy Diet, Leaving the Saints, Finding Your North Star, or Four Day Win--all available at my favorite independent bookstore Powell's Books. Psychology Today, NPR and USA Today consider Martha "the best known Life Coach in America." Beck is a very straightforward writer who believes each person has an "inner-compass" and has available to them "limitless possibilities" to help them locate their "just right" lives.

I have envied Martha Beck for a long time and was motivated to choose the profession of "Life Design Coach" because of her own courage to do so. At present, she now calls herself a "personal trainer" saying, "I work with healthy people to help them achieve maximum fitness--that is, well-being and quality of life." After being professors, both Martha and I chose to forego the prestige of upper-crust academia as well as to abandon our restrictive and misogynous religions'-of-origin.

Both of us have conducted research in China and--in our advice giving--we tend to use the three great Chinese philosophies of Daoism, Buddhism and, Confucianism (with a feminist slant). Just like Beck, I received my graduate degree from an Ivy League School in the early 1990s and published research that was focused on women, social-psychology and religion.

It seems that we were "separated at birth" because of our pasts, because we both like to write helpful books, and because we each regularly publish essays offering personal and practical advice. But enough about our common threads in the great garment of life. It is more important to convey the unique messages of her latest book, Steering by Starlight.

Steering by Starlight, according to its introduction, is about "finding and following the life you were meant to live: your highest and happiest possible destiny." The theory that Beck uses is much like the multitude of helpful books on business and self-help shelves. She assumes, along with much Ancient Greek and Indian Philosophy, that there exists a fundamental purpose to everyone's life and believes that we all have a particular dharma (in an Indian-philosophical sense). If we ignore this elemental calling (or dharma) we will be thwarted.

When I say "thwarted" I mean we will feel "ill at ease" until we honor our "true selves" or our "innate destiny"--something that will forever follow us, haunt us, and hunt us down until we honor its mandates.

I can see why Beck left behind her position as a sociology instructor at Harvard University because her hope-filled theories would be critically eviscerated at any academic conference.

Why? Because Beck's fundamental beliefs would be considered totalizing, essentialist, simplistic and a typical example of the naively Western grand narrative in a Postmodern ("pomo") sense.

The great 20th-century French sociologist/philosopher--Michel Foucault--would shame Beck for mimicking the homogenizing, colonizing and mono-mythic paradigms of the uniquely-American project called the "Human Potential Movement" (HPM).

To wit:  HPM was a superbly optimistic movement that arose out of the social and intellectual milieu of the 1960s and was formed around the concept that humans could cultivate their "extraordinary potential."  Its advocates believed that this buried treasure lay largely untapped in most people. The movement took as its premise that in discovering, developing and releasing one's inner potential she/he could experience an exceptional quality of life filled with simplicity, happiness, creativity and abundant fulfillment. 

Why would Foucault reject such an optimistic theory? In brief, (and if he were alive), he would accuse Beck for proffering "a reductionistic fantasy" that assumes humans could be "hygienic" individuals who live unaffected by their surroundings. He would mock the romantic idea that people, by muscular will alone, would be able to "throw off" the multiple cultural influences operating within and all around them. If readers are interested in learning more about Foucauldian frameworks, I'll offer these in another book review (I promise)!

But, if you must read an alternative to this common (reductionistic) mistake in career-advice literature, read my very favorite business book this year called Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career by a very plain-speaking French sociologist and philosopher named Herminia Ibarra. 

Like Foucault, Ibarra does not subscribe to the fashionable belief in pop-psychology, i.e., that there is a singular treasure (or self) within all of us that will point us to the work we were meant to do. Rather, she urges readers to experiment and even play with their identities--which she says, are always multiple and naturally morphing according to whatever social-context or in which ever job they find themselves.  

For Ibarra, such multiplicity need not be "read" pathologically nor must it cause a baffling crisis of identity. Rather, if accepted, this fluidity of "self" can be freeing, relationally-responsive, dynamic, intimate and spontaneously-inventive.

Even though Martha has abandoned her "pomo" philosophies, I find her work unique and quite forward-thinking when she turns to the latest research in psychiatry, neurology and related fields for the ruts we can return to and the ways we might change these phenomena.

Too, Beck writes in a way that will speak to anyone with a ninth-grade education--the target audience, in terms of literacy, of the average person who buys self-help books. For instance, she keeps her writing teacherly and repetitive; she identifies and reiterates three simple stages along the vocational path to recapturing a satisfying life that include:

* "the stargazer" a metaphor that helps readers understand why it's so easy to lose themselves in an endless quest for self-knowledge; she offers strategies for sighting their "North Star" (a trope of her earliest career book and career workbook called, Finding Your North Star);

* "the mapmaker" simile used to evaluate one's unbearable situation in order to plot a different course for the future;

* "the pathfinder" which explores the "adventures" or trials that may be encountered as one travels along their ever-challenging, new life course.

Whether one is seeking better relationships, more focused career direction, physical fitness or to create a more harmonious lifestyle, Steering by Starlight's stories, experiential references and up-to-date, neuro-scientific evidence will guide HPM believers to "actualize their human potential," uncover their own "inner compass," and perhaps, find their way in the world.

Note: Even though I may sound a little sarcastic in this review, I appreciate the courage, humor, and Beck's approachable framework; I use her framework often as a creative career consultant, in my own Life Design Publishing business as well as in my writing.

What do you think about your own potential? Are you cynical about change or are you hopeful about releasing possibilities for vocational transformation?