Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaim Your True Nature to Create the Life You Want

By Martha Beck

Like all “wayfinders” or “menders” (Martha Beck’s terms for those of us who share an urgent drive to realize our own true natures and work to restore the planet’s balance), you may be aware of something calling you to become the change you wish to see in the world. “Start immediately,” she says. “I mean, this very moment.” Beck says that we don’t need external institutions or teachers to show us the ropes. “There aren’t any fixed structures on the wayfinder’s path, and there is no institutionalized way of training. You can find other menders — in fact, you’ll draw them to you — but the only ropes they can show you are the ones they’re weaving as they go along. Wayfinders, by definition, create paths where there are none and find destinations no one knew were there.”
And she promises that though the wayfinder’s path is rooted in stillness, it’s sure to take us through “the most wildly active corners of the wild new world.” Beck has given us a handbook to riding the turbulent waves of change to find our own right life and, in the process, help others as well. Beginning with what she calls her “rhinoceros moment” in the African wild — a moment of startling clarity, beauty, and joy that could have as easily have resulted in death as in a whole new way of seeing and navigating the world — Beck has sought out the ancient wisdom of many cultures. She believes that in them, we will find the key to healing ourselves and our planet. Her four simple yet powerful tools for transformation — wordlessness, oneness, imagination, and forming — help us discover our hidden inner identity and unleash our own amazing creative energy. And we won’t be left stranded and alone as we do this necessary work. Beck assures us that we will be led to a “tribe” of like-minded people who can help and companion us on our way. Martha Beck holds a PhD from Harvard University and is the author of several books, including the best-selling Finding Your Own North Star and Expecting Adam. She also trains, coaches, and writes a monthly column for O, the Oprah Magazine. Beck has been called “the best-known life coach in America” by Psychology Today for good reason — she is wise, insightful, funny, aware, and capable of helping us tap into our own wordless inner knowing to make the most important discovery we could ever make: the knowledge of what to do with our “wild and precious life.”