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| Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live | 
 enlarge | Author: Martha Beck
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $2.66
You Save: $12.29 (82%)
New (66) Used (74) Collectible (2) from $2.66
Avg. Customer Rating:  107 reviews
Sales Rank: 2515
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 0812932188
Dewey Decimal Number: 158.1
EAN: 9780812932188
ASIN: 0812932188
Publication Date: January 29, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Pages have some highlighting/markings, SHIPS OUT FAST!!
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| Customer Reviews:
 MUST READ October 29, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I can't say enough about this book. I am one of those fools who reads way too many self-help / pseudo-psychology books. The are like magnets for me. ALmost always I am disappointed. I say to myself..."they wrote a whole book about this??? It could have been stated in one paragraph." Not so with Finding Your Own North Star. This book is incredible. It not only inspires and gives hope and beautiful sparks for one's intuition -- more importantly, the author offers clear, concrete advice for taking this inspiration and really, truly finding one's destiny. It's incredible. She deserves some sort of award, or to be independently wealthy for life or something. The book is life changing. I say this as someone who has read them all...for many, many years. This one is THE ONE. Also, just to make it all fun and entertaining, this author is incredibly witty and crazy. One warning: Don't expect to breeze through it. I'm a speed reader and it took me 8 hours to read these 365 pages, and there are some things I still have to do. I hope everyone who reads this finds their North Star.
This is a simply lovely book October 21, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Finding Your Path Through Life
Martha Beck is a wise and insightful woman, and this is nowhere more clearly seen than in her book Finding Your Own North Star. My own book makes important use of her concept of finding out who you really are and then living the life that is uniquely right for you, but Martha's book is the definitive work on that subject. 2500 years ago Pindar, one of the great poets of ancient Greece, wrote "Become who you are." That is wonderful advice - vital advice - and Finding Your Own North Star tells you exactly how to start down that perfect road for you.
Highly Recommended Life Transition and Discovery Tool! September 9, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
It became clear when reading her earlier book "Expecting Adam" that Martha Beck was born to write. Thankfully she found this out for herself and has continued to share her gift with others through books like this one and her regular column in "O, The Oprah Magazine".
After my first read of "Finding Your Own North Star", I began sharing it with several of my life coaching clients. I also have given numerous copies as gifts.
This book is broad in its coverage of a wide variety of life challenges and tools. Martha Beck's humor weaves itself in and out of the text, making you laugh when you least expect it. Some of the material likely will surprise you in a wonderful way (this was my personal experience especially when reading the chapter on intuition). But mostly Beck's wisdom will help guide you to your own North Star.
I have not read another author who better helps you explore your essential self, become aware of the triggers that cause you to put on your social mask and show you how this gets in the way of living an authentic life.
Plan to spend a lot of time with this book. When done right you will think, ask questions, ponder, journal, reflect, explore, write and take concrete forward steps. Join with others in a group to work through this book and the exercises together. Sure, that sounds like a lot of work . . . yet small in comparison to the payoff of reaping a more authentic and rewarding life.
As a social psychologist, I respect this book. As I coach, I recommend this book to all, especially those experiencing a major life transition or anyone trying to figure out what it is you love to do and how you can do more of it. This is a great instruction book for creating your unique and best life.
This book is a gift May 24, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
This is in response to "working girl" and others comments that this book is about "spin". The concept behind "Finding Your Own North Star" implies that we don't all have the same "dream job". The idea that there are "North Star" businesses is just an example of why we NEED this message. Our society has conditioned us to believe that there are a handful of careers that reap success and happiness. And if you don't qualify for those positions, you are doomed to a medoicre life. This simply is not true. It may be that a person's "dream job" is working in an animal shelter giving love to injured animals. It may be a low paying job, but if it is that person's true path in life, they won't care about that. The joy of life fills the person that is doing what they love. Each and every human being has a purpose on this earth. Every purpose has immeasurable value. The challenge is to look beyond what we are told by society, and find the answers within ourselves. Martha Beck has provided an instruction manual on how to do just that. I hope that you will read the book again. Don't rush through it, but let it sink in. Take some quiet moments to really contemplate the message. Finding your North Star isn't about money. It is about reconnecting to your true self, and letting it guide you in the direction that you were meant to travel.
A Turtle Tracking the North Star May 3, 2007
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Martha Beck - life coach and monthly columnist for "O: Oprah Magazine" - adores turtles. The turtle, after all, embodies much to be admired: a hard, thick shell on the outside, to protect itself from the bumps and bruises of manuevering through life; a very soft and vulnerable inside beneath the resistant carapace; lacking in speed but has a plodding persistence that wins over the hare every time; and, while protecting its head when at rest, is required to stick its neck out in order to move forward. The turtle, Beck points out, is a role model for living successful lives.
Moving ahead in life, turtle-style, is an excellent way to reach our North Stars - that point of light to guide us home like a compass in even the darkest sky. In an easy-to-absorb and enjoyable, often humorous style, Beck explains how so many of us get lost, or get stuck, and fail to achieve our most cherished dreams or any measure of happiness. We are a division of two selves requiring balance: the essential self - our core being that is guided mostly by uninhibited instinct combined with an inner voice of wisdom - with the social self - the part of us that has learned how to play nice with others, function in a diverse society, and, alas, all too often wear masks to hide our more tender and true core selves.
Beck does not advocate turning to one or other self exclusively, both essential and social selves are necessary, but rather finding the healthy balance so that we can remain on the right path toward that North Star. Too much essential self and we become irresponsible members of a civilized society. Too much social self, and we lose touch with our core, sinking into superficiality, losing sight of our dreams, and wearing our masks so long that we forget our own true faces.
Beck illustrates how our physical bodies often are first to let us know, loud and clear, if we only pay attention, that we have veered off the path. A persistent unhappiness is our first clue. Easy enough to recognize. But sometimes our grief is more internalized, less obvious, and so signs of illness, fatigue, boredom, apathy, chronic irritability, all point to a need to check our internal maps. People behaving badly are not so much mean and evil, she says, as in pain. And pain of any kind is a clear signal that we are not doing what we are supposed to be doing, that we have lost touch with our essential, core selves. It's time to listen to the voice inside again, the one belonging to the essential self, for where we have gone wrong.
In fifteen chapters, the author gives plenty of guidance and examples, many quizzes and questions to ponder, much sound advice and clear illustration. Whether the issue at hand is a relationship gone sour or a career gone dull (and one issue often goes hand in hand with another), her common sense guidelines encourage the reader to get back on track again and how to do so. Change, she acknowledges, is uncomfortable. But life IS change, and it is in fact change that keeps us young and vital and alert, much as flexing a muscle keeps it strong. The turtle never gets ahead without stretching its neck out from under that shell first. The bounty and joy of life, however, is always worth it. Dealing with change and the unknown is part of the hero's saga, or quest, in finding the North Star, and no one gets through without encountering their share of obstacles and hurdles and tests. It is the testing, in fact, that makes us into heroes and gives us the tools and know-how we need to go on.
"A willingness to make mistakes and recover from them is absolutely essential," she writes. As is doing a "terrible job" if it is on the path to learning and growth. To sustain oneself through the rough spots, her advice is to keep oneself in the positive, avoid the negative, and that includes the company one keeps (find people who support and encourage you), the kind of recreation one chooses (don't watch a violent movie and expect to feel positive about yourself or others), and how one treats others (don't just take the support, offer it in return to those who are worthy).
"Change hurts," she warns. "...for a person who's stuck in the wrong life, setting out on a North Star quest has all the combined attractions of suicide and childbirth. To complete it, you'll have to kill off the old You and give birth to a different You, someone nobody has ever seen before. Neither side of this process is painless, and they're both scary as hell. I've watched hundreds of folks make dramatic life transformations, and in every case, the person in question experienced alienation, confusion, frustration, and a thousand other forms of acute distress... the eventual payoff was tremendous - cheap at twice the price."
In the end, Beck states, we all manifest our own destinies. Whether we finally reach our personal North Star or not, it is entirely up to each and every one of us. Those of us who are eternal pessimists and live in a mire of negativity will always hone in like magnets on failure and disappointment. Those of us who maintain our North Star focus throughout the expected trials and tribulations of normal living, will claim what we were meant to have: our dreams. Turtles are created to cross the finish line.
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