Steering by Starlight: The Science and Magic of Finding Your Destiny - Softcover

Beck, Martha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1605298646 ISBN 13: 9781605298641

Verlag: Harmony/Rodale/Convergent, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

In Steering by Starlight, renowned life coach Martha Beck, Ph.D., describes the step-by-step process she uses with her private clients to help them navigate the terrain of their best lives.

Bringing together cutting-edge research in psychiatry, neurology, and related fields in an accessible, substantive, original way, Dr. Beck offers powerful methods for solving the problems that beset ordinary people. Using her trademark wisdom, empathy, and engaging style, she connects you with proven, effective strategies that have worked for the hundreds of people she has coached. For those who have found your North Stars, this book will be an invaluable tool to stay the course and overcome obstacles. For those who still feel adrift, it will provide a way to find true North and follow the path of best destiny.

Dr. Beck identifies three stages along the path to recapturing a satisfying life: 

   • "The Stargazer" helps you understand why it is so easy to lose yourself and offers strategies for sighting your North Star 
   • "The Mapmaker" uses this newly clarified perspective to evaluate your situation and plot a course for upcoming years 
   • "The Pathfinder" discusses the adventures that may be encountered as you travel along this new life course 

Whether you are seeking better relationships, a more focused career direction, a more harmonious lifestyle, or the achievement of specific fitness goals, the colorful anecdotes, case studies, and exercises in Steering by Starlight will point the way.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MARTHA BECK, PHD, is a life coach and monthly columnist for O: The Oprah Magazine. She has taught career development at the American Graduate School of International Management and was research assistant to Dr. John Kotter at Harvard Business School. The best-selling author of Finding Your Own North Star, Expecting Adam, and The Four-Day Win, she lives in Phoenix.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

CHAPTER 1

The End

"The first guy to go in always carries a shotgun," says Kirk Fowler. He's not a big man, for a law enforcer; in fact, he's not much taller than I am. This is a quality I appreciate in a martial arts instructor. Kirk is my sensei, and in the middle of a lesson, he's telling me how he used to serve warrants on suspected drug runners and coyotes, con artists who take would- be immigrants' money, then load them into trucks and abandon them in the desert to die.

"These are really violent people," Kirk says, "and they have an intense fight-or-flight reaction at that first sight of the officers. They're usually doing drugs as well as selling them, and that makes them about as violent and unpredictable as humans get. You're never in more danger than when you're walking into a room to serve a warrant. It's scary as hell."

It's hard to imagine Kirk terrified. He's a master of aikido, a martial art that focuses more on inner peace than on physical power. I'm learning aikido because it works like magic. Literally. An aikido master gently touches your head, and suddenly you're on the floor. You try to slug him, and you can barely lift your arm. These effects feel almost supernatural, but given a few minutes, anyone can use them well enough to see that they're real. So it isn't surprising that Kirk's aikido training was very helpful when he worked for the Border Patrol. What is surprising is the way it helped.

"One day when I was serving a warrant, I decided to try going in with my energy totally calm and relaxed, instead of high adrenaline. The suspects were in a motel room, wired, scared, and well armed. To reach a place where my energy was calm, I had to imagine that all of them were already dead.

"So I went into that room feeling really quiet and respectful, the way you'd feel going to a funeral. And when I opened the door, no one did anything. The suspects just looked at me as though they'd invited me to a summer picnic. They cooperated with the officers through the whole arrest. Even to me, that was weird.

"From then on," Kirk concludes, "I kept my energy tuned that way whenever we served a warrant. I still had the shotgun. But I never needed it. Over and over, people who should have fought or run simply started cooperating."

I know this makes no kind of sense. It sounds like an exaggeration, if not an outright lie. But I don't think it is. I've seen and felt Kirk's energy change the atmosphere in the room without his moving a muscle.

"In my mind," he says, "the fight's already won. You begin where you want it to end. That's most of the battle."

Most people will never discover this because it contradicts everything we're taught to expect. We have a linear view of progress: We start at the beginning of a task, and we work our way to the end. This is a useful way to look at things, but it isn't the only way. Especially when you're seeking to fulfill your destiny, the best way to succeed is to begin at the end.

A Quick Trip to the Observatory

By the time you finish this book, you should be able to identify and dissolve most of the mind clouds that keep you from seeing your own North Star. This is a process you'll continue all your life. It's a very specific and disciplined way of thinking (although it's easy and delicious once you're used to it). It will bring you inner peace and also help you build your outward empire. But it takes a while to make all that happen, and I've never been a fan of deferred gratification. So right now, even if you're a homeless junkie who found this book in a dumpster and is planning to eat it, I want it to give you access to the end of your journey, the fulfillment of your best destiny.

Think of the techniques in this chapter as ways you can visit a celestial observatory in your head. The observatory has powerful telescopes that you can use to get a clear look at the stars. For a moment, as you look through those telescopes, your own North Star will shine like a floodlight. You'll feel as though your destiny is a done deal--until something pushes your mind out of the observatory and back into its typical patterns, the well- worn trails ground into your life by repetition and habit, and you go back to feeling as though nothing in your life will ever really work.

You may have experienced this after hearing a powerful speaker or watching an uplifting movie. "I can do anything!" you feel. "Nothing can stop me now!" Then you get home from the convention hall or the movie theater, and everything goes to hell in a hand basket. Your spouse yells at you, the mail is full of bills, the cat has eaten the steaks you left out to thaw and is now experiencing bouts of diarrhea in parts of your home you didn't even know existed. Abruptly, you lose your connection to your Stargazer self and slam back into your cold, cruel, earthbound daily life.

Upcoming chapters will help you learn how to keep this exhausting emotional vacillation from smacking you around. You'll learn to live in your Stargazer self, which exists beyond the reach of what Chinese philosophy calls "the 10,000 joys and sorrows" of ordinary life. But right now, from the word go, I want you to be able to run back to the observatory and look through the telescope whenever you need reassurance. This can help you stay motivated as you learn the sometimes baffling work of becoming a full-time Stargazer. So, as they never told you in school, last things first.

Step 1 on the Path of Your Destiny: Getting Whatever You Want

Screenwriters tell us that all movie plots begin with a character who wants something very, very much and is having a lot of trouble getting it. We viewers identify with that character immediately, because that's us up on the big screen. That struggle to get what we want is the story of our lives.

Identifying Your Wants

Right now, you probably have a mental list of things you want very, very much. You may be working toward these things, buying Lotto tickets in bulk, praying in every living language as well as interpretive dance. In the space below, write down a few of the things you most frequently wish you had: a bigger house, loving friends, more time to meditate, a boyfriend with fewer than 12 pit bulls. List up to five of these things.

Some Things I Really Want

Thing 1: _________________________________________

Thing 2: _________________________________________

Thing 3: _________________________________________

Thing 4: _________________________________________

Thing 5: _________________________________________

No offense, but if you're like most people, the things you just wrote down probably aren't what you actually want. More likely, each thing is a means to an end. Remember King Midas? When he got his wish--that everything he touched would turn to gold--he found himself surrounded by cold metal objects that used to be his bed, his favorite horse, his wife, and his children. Obviously, this didn't feel nearly as good as he'd expected. The moral: What we think would bring us happiness often won't do the trick. What we're really after when we yearn for something is a feeling state.

Look back at the list you just made and imagine that you already have each thing on the list. Try to feel as you'd feel if you had millions of dollars or a perfect lover or a gorgeous body that never gets tired or sick. Pay attention to the feeling state you'd get from this dream come true. In the spaces below, write a word or two that best describes the feeling state you'd get from having each of the things you want.

How I'll Feel When I Have What I Really Want

When I have Thing 1, the sensation I'll feel is: _________________

When I have Thing 2, the sensation I'll feel is: _________________

When I have Thing 3, the sensation I'll feel is:...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Harmony/Rodale/Convergent
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1605298646
• ISBN 13: 9781605298641
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland