Martha Beck

Welcome to Season three of What's Her Story. I am more excited for this season than any season before, simply because I feel like we're better at telling women's stories than we've ever been in the past. And on top of it, we have the most unbelievable lineup of guests. This lineup will blow your socks off, no questions about it. I am so excited to share all of it with you.

I'm super excited for today's guest, Martha Beck. If you don't know, mark that she is Oprah's favorite life coach and the best selling author of numerous books, including her newest, The Way of Integrity. Take us back to that time when you felt like you had hit rock bottom and something dramatic needed to change. The year I heard twenty nine, I decided not to tell a single lie for a whole calendar year. And by the way, I was also very physically ill at this time. I had a bunch

of autoimmune diseases. I could barely get out of bed or use my hands. I was in constant chronic pain. I mean, things were not ideal. And so I did go a whole year without telling a single lie of any kind, not polite, not white, not any kind of lie. And my entire life exploded because it needed to either walked away from or was ejected from my religion, my family of origin because of the religion things very religious family.

Quit my job, which was an assistant professor, quit my industry, which is academia, because I hated that and I couldn't lie and say I liked it. I because I was living in an area. I was raised Mormon in Provo, Utah, which is a very Mormon area, and once I left the church, it was not really a good place for me and my family so left my home realized I

was gay, so they won't my marriage. Pretty much everything that would define a life went away that year, and I started to feel happy for the first time in my life, even though I was grieving all this stuff, like massively, something started healing inside me because I was telling the truth about myself all the time, And they're right, the truth does say free. Did you feel any guilt for not wanting anymore the things that you had chosen, the people you had chosen in some instances? Like did

that feel guilty at all? Yeah? I mean, because I was being so incredibly scrupulous about trying to tell the truth, I mostly felt just sorrow. But when I would sometimes get into the mindset of the people who thought that I should have lived, like if I everybody I knew growing up was Mormon, right, So when you leave the Mormon church, that is considered a sin worse than murder.

And in addition, I had left partly because my father was a sort of very dominant figure in the church, and he had also abused me sexually as a child. And also I found out during that year had had actually published a lot of things that were just lies in order to support the church. So a lot of people told me I was trying to destroy the entire religion, that I was trying to destroy my family, my father

and everything I knew. I wasn't. I knew absolutely in my heart that I was not, But when I got into their mindset, I would think, oh, I must be such a terrible person to them. So it was a kind of guilt, but it was like I knew it wasn't true because I've been so careful about doing what I felt was right the whole time. And that's what

I still ask clients. I say, you know, when they're saying, oh, I've done the wrong things, I've been a bad mother, or whatever it is, I always just say, all right, have you ever in your life gotten up in the morning trying to do harm to the world or to any being, to try to cause suffering? And mostly they say no, I know the ones that don't, and I don't stick with. And then the other question I always ask them is is there any time when you weren't

trying your hardest to do the right thing? And almost everybody says yes. I really believe almost everyone is trying to do their best, and we leave integrity, that is our true selves, because we split ourselves away from what our true nature would have us do in order to follow the ways that other people think are right or good.

So it's really important not to get into somebody else's mind st and look at yourself, to stay inside your own integrity and just do your best from there, and then you can always be sure you've done all you can and no one can be expected to do anymore. One of the really interesting threads throughout your story is that you've been willing to leave the comfort of communities so many times. How did you deal with that and how do you recommend other people overcome that? Yeah, that

is really a hard one. I mean, we are primates, right, and primates are the only kind of animal that in a dangerous situation, we don't seek safe places. We seek safe others. We go to other primates and huddle together, and that makes us feel safe. Other animals, like horses, will try to find a safe place. So for us to leave a community is a survival fear, and for us to lose a community is almost a life threatening grief. Like it's such an intense loss, and I experienced it

as very intense. I remember reading a poem by Stanley Kunitz that part of it goes, Oh, I have made for myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered. How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses. And I remember going around thinking how shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? And then I remember I'm suddenly quoting a lot of poetry. So I guess that's how you get

through it. You read a lot of poetry. But um, what happens is that you grieve and it turns into a need for kindness from others, which can lead you to kindness to the self, which leads you to healing stronger at the broken places. You come away from those losses with a kindness where every loss used to be. And what that does is it builds you a new tribe. And it is a tribe of your true affections. And

that's what I've experienced since leaving all those communities. Before I left them, I was intensely lonely, even though there were people around me. Now I'm not lonely. You left the world you'd built when you had small children. How did you think about your children in that transition and how did it work out? I was very worried about them, and um, maybe that was right. You can never go back and replay it to see what would have happened

if it had been different. I knew I needed to leave when my daughter, my oldest daughter, turned eight and Mormon's baptized children at the age of eight, and I had already left the church, and one day, right after her eighth birthday, um, there was a knock at the door and it was a whole group of eight year olds from around the neighborhood with a couple of Sunday school teachers and they had cookies and balloons and stuff,

and they said, we're having a party. All you have to do is come get baptized and we'll have this big party for you. And if you don't come and get baptized, you won't be allowed to play with us anymore. And I was like, okay, we're out. We are out. And that child she's now I could say she they've now come out as a non binary, so they they

remember that as a traumatic experience. And even my younger daughter, who now lives in England, she went to a therapist and the therapist said, did you ever have a cult around you? Because even that child, who was only four when I left, it had changed something in her mind that later later required therapy. And I remember when we got to our new home, moved to Arizona. She she was four, and she came and sat on the steps with me one day and she said, I miss everything.

I missed my friends, and she cried for a while. I cried for a while, and then she gave it. He this big sigh and she said, oh, well, I like the moon they have here. Well, you kind of glossed over the part where you said and then I, you know, left my marriage, realized I was gay. Talk to us about that, because I imagine that that might have even been just as hard, or in different ways more difficult than even leaving your religion. It actually wasn't.

It wasn't because I had normalized that. I've been living outside of Utah. I've known a lot of gay people. My then husband, I think we both would have come out of as gay in high school, and we went to the same high school, so we grew up together. We both went to Harvard when we were freshman and stayed there for our pH d s and um he struggled with a great deal. I never identified as gay.

I was too traumatized. But we had talked a great deal about it, and I remember always thinking, you know, he's his best self when he just lets himself be this way. So thanks to him, I had normalized it really, really deeply. And then we just decided to unmarry. And it wasn't a fake marriage. It was I felt deeply loved and I certainly loved him, but I thought, you know, you've got to let yourself be you, and I've got

to let myself be me. So because he was my closest friend at the time, I said to him first, like once we left the church, I was like, you need to be you and that's kind of sad because well I do. And he said, well you should do the same thing. And I said, you mean dat other man and he goes, not man, and I thought women. And then I was like, yeah, totally. And then I met someone that I thought I would experiment with and

we're still together and it's been like thirty years. And now a quick break your evolution in terms of you know, you met Karen and then many many years later you and Karen introduced another love into your relationship. Can you share a bit about that. Yeah. At that point, we were living in California, which is a place I also went just because I felt a strong inclination to go out there and sort of live in a forest area, and I sort of lived away from human interaction for

about six years and it was beautiful. I mean I'd go out and track animals in the forest every day. And we were there for so long that you forget what it's like to be sort of interconnected with human society. A lot of those pressures of social expectation start to

just drop away when you're living in nature. And somebody came to visit us at the ranch where I lived, and I had met her once before, which is an Australian novelist, and I'd been her in Africa where she came to go on safari with a group for people I was with, and I thought she was amazing, like brilliant, funny, sensitive, amazing. So she came to stay at the ranch for a while to do work for somebody else who was there, and we started talking to her more, and Karen actually

got to know her before I did really well. And one day Karen came to me and she sat down and said, I really have to talk to you about something. I said, what is it? And she said, well, Rowan. I feel things about Rowan and I'm not sure why. I'm not sure if it's like a sister connection. But as she talked, she was turning bright red and I looked at her and I thought, you're in love, and

I I felt this burst of joy, absolute joy. I was so thrilled for her, and I thought, that's the way it's supposed to go, but that is what I feel. I just didn't feel the things you're supposed to feel in society. I was thrilled. That was like, this is amazing, invider to come stay with us, I'll stay in the guest room. You guys can get together, like I was just I still can't explain this overwhelming joy. I felt

it was ridiculous. So Roke came and stayed in the house with us, yes, and we all sat around talking and getting to know each other, and I thought, oh my goodness, this person is really amazing. And we just talked and talked and talked and talked and talked for about three weeks, like almost constantly, and then towards the end of that time, we were like, we're all in love with each other, Like I'm in love with both of you, and you're in love with both of us,

and you're in love with both of us. Like we just sat there. It's not like we said polyamory we wanted. We were completely stunned and embarrassed. But we were also surrounded by nobody but bears and deer, so we were like, okay, and um, we just thought, all right, this, let's see how this turns out. And let see, it's been like six seven years and we have a two year old now, and it's like having a three legged stool. You wonder how it ever worked with only two do you all

share a room? Well, since then, since we had our baby. Um, what we realized is Row sleeps in the room next to the nursery, and um, Karen gets up early with the baby. So Rokan who we're not mourning people, So Karen is she gets up with the baby in the morning. And I like to stay up late but not be waking up with the baby. So it turned out that each of us has our own room. And it's like

a wonderful, wonderful thing. And and it's all as I said, we have this amazing Our whole family runs according to sort of almost almost it's like you know, nuns would get up and do their morning things, and then go to their chores and everything. When you have three people, you have to be really organ eyes and really communicative.

And what happens, especially since my son with Down syndrome lives with us, and people with Down syndrome tend to love ritual every day, is like we have morning communion where we all connect and talk. Then we have you know, we all go to our separate things during the day. We have a schedule who gets Lilah the baby at

what time? And then at five pm, Adam has decreated, is absolutely no work, and we all get together and we commune again, and then we have our dinner, and then we always have this cuddle time after dinner between dinner and sleep. And my god, if nobody out there is doing this, do it. It will change your life. It is awesome. And then you sleep in your own bed.

What happened when you left the bears and you had to the three of you enter back into society that is less accepting of unusual arrangements because everyone is a fear the unknown, and so they probably imposed that fear on you. I would imagine just when we were ready for people to really put pressure on us, there was a plague and nobody did anything for two years, so nobody ever got in our faces about it because no one was there. So it was like we were separated

by distance, and then we were separated by pandemic. And then we went on Glennon Doyle's podcast and talked about it, and now we're talking about it with you, and so it's sort of out of the out of the box. Now, let's talk a bit about your career, because it seems almost impossible to people that Oprah has a life coach, let alone that you became that. I mean, how does one become Oprah's life coach. I hate bursting people's bubble on this, but I am not Oprah's like hired and

paid life coach. I am a life coach who worked for Oprah through the whole span of the Oprah magazine. Because I wrote columns for the magazine. She read my first few columns, and then she wrote to me and told me that every episode she read, every every episode

she study, she always read my column first. So I was Oprah's life coach in the sense that I kind of belonged to But it's not that she needed a life coach, but I was always sort of giving her advice through the columns, and sometimes she'd reach back and thank me, And then she started sending people to me. When celebrities would go to her and say fix me, she'd say, I can't do this, and she would call me on the phone and say, how do you want to deal with this? And I'd be like, send them along.

So do celebrities have different problems than the rest of us? I mean, how do you think about that? They have the very same problems, only so much worse, so much worse. I have never seen fame or money or power heal anybody's life, not ever, ever, ever. I have seen people with tremendous fame and money and power who were just destroying themselves. I mean, when you have the money and the influence to get I had one celebrity client who was taking two d oxycontent a day a day would

have killed an army of elephants. And this was not a large person. It's only money and influence that can get you that deeply into the horrors that are available to people who are trying to kill their own pain, and it just gets worse. In this last book, I talked about it as being the false solution. Wealth fame, power. They look like solutions to us, but they are not. They make things much much worse unless you you've come back to integrity yourself and become whole, and then they

can make the whole world better. So replace those three things, money, power, fame. What are the three things that do heal, that do make a life better? Great question, stillness, self examination, and honesty. Those are the three things. That's it, that's all you need. And I've seen people take those three things and become incredibly famous and powerful. Nelson Mandela did this during the

twenty seven years he was imprisoned in Robin Island. He went in as an angry young activist and he spent those twenty seven years in stillness, self contemplation and getting really really honest with himself. And he looked at things like the fact that he was against racism and yet he was angry at white people, which you know, he was being really self scrutinizing as an anti racist and saying, no, I have to He started to learn Afrikaans, he made

friends with the guards. In those twenty seven years of stillness, self scrutiny and just absolutely relentless honesty, he became so powerful, and not even his picture was allowed out of Robin Island. Nothing of him was that. And yet his his fame has influence. His power circled the whole world. And when he came out, he was able to quiet the whole country without bloodshed and become this incredible inspiration to the

whole world. But he didn't want When he went on Oprah, he sat down on the stage and then he started the show and he said, so, what are we talking about? And Oprad laughed for like a full minute, and then she said you. He was like, well, why would you do that? Like he was so he was so whole in himself, he didn't need anything. And that's the point at which we can access everything. And now a quick break, how do we become more helpful to each other? And

now there's a lot of layers to this question. One is just in general, how can we be more helpful to one another? But also, um, and you and I have just us as way long ago Marthin you probably don't remember, but and you help me so much. I I was sharing with you that I have this blessing or curse where I see pain. Right, so I'll be in a supermarket and I can see who is beaten by their husband or like I just I see pain everywhere and I absorb that and and it's been a

problem for me. And you shared with me at that time that the best way to help someone if you see that is often to stand near them and look them in the eye and let them know they're not alone, just by being there. I don't know if your answer to that has changed since then. I would still say that's a really good way to do it. But another thing that may have changed a bit. If you look at psychological research, you will see that in our brains

we have something called a negativity bias. And it's because our brains evolved to pick up danger and problems so we could avoid them. But what happens is we get stuck in our negativity bias and we don't see things that aren't negative. I remember getting on a plane one day. I was talking to a guy who was a white water river rafter before I got on the plane, and he said, you know, even in a channel where there's almost no water, there's just rocks. Never look at the rocks,

because where your eyes go, the boat goes. Then I get on the plane and I sat next to a hockey player, professional hockey player, and he said, you know, when you're shooting the put, the goalie is so huge and the goal is so small that you only have these tiny little apertures where the puck can get through. And he says, but never look at the goalie. Only look at the spaces, because where your eyes go, the

puck goes. Then I got off the plane. I was talking to someone about horse riding and they said, well, you got to make sure you don't look at the places you don't want the horse to go, because where your eyes go, the horse goes. And this was in one day, and I was like, Okay, I get it. Where your attention goes, everything goes, your life goes. So you're a negativity biases helping you pick out pain, destruction,

abuse and all of that. What I invite you to do is start pulling away from from your negativity bias and seeing the way a dog sees like, find the joy in people, find what what is working for them. Stand by someone and don't just say in your mind, I'm so sorry you're being beaten by your husband. In your mind say I know you have the strength to leave that asshole. Excuse my language, you know, but like I know, you can get out of this. You are

incredibly resourceful. You are a human, for Heaven's sake, in the twenty one century. You can do this like it's going to be okay, and when your attention goes there. This is what I found with my clients, the other person has an easier time going there too. I love that. I just read this great article about therapy that so that therapist should really change how they approach the conversation from saying, so, what's wrong or you know, what's been

bothering you? Just saying like, what's the best thing that's been happening this week for you? And then that changes the whole conversation. Yeah. I think that's why people like coaches and are starting to hire coaches instead of therapists. Therapy means something's wrong with you, and coaching means you're

just going to get better. How do you take what you've learned When you think about your young daughter Lila, will you be able to teach her things at a younger age than you could your three older children because you've had these transformations, like what what are messages you would want her to learn now? Or when she's three

or four or five. The biggest thing that I wish I had done with my first three children that I think I have a chance to do with her is too absolutely respect and validate every emotion she has all the time, because little kids don't start out trying to be bad or anything. And with my older kids, I

tried to make them. You know, I remember taking them to church in Utah before I left the church, and there was this whole thing about if you're child is making a noise in church, you go into an empty room and you make them face a wall for the full hour of the church meeting. And I remember hearing that and going, Okay, I don't think that's what Jesus would do. So we just stopped going to church and we spend time in nature playing on Sunday. So I

didn't do that much. But then they went to school, and some of them loved you know, two of them love school. One of them didn't. But I tried to make them fit in with school culture. Not so much at home, but at school. You gotta do what they say. No you don't like if Lila just has an oil and water relationship with school, I'm gonna pull her out that so fast. And you know, I've now met people who have been schooled by a tutor who flew to different places in the world with them on an absolute

shoe string budget. You know you want to learn history, Let's go to France and live there on five dollars a day. And my god, these are some of the most brilliantly educated people I know. So I would shape I want to shape her experience around her feelings instead of trying to push her feelings into some sort of a social category or a box. What do you do when you feel like you have conflict with your partners, or your friends or your clients, the same thing every time.

There's actually a script, and I really recommend you do it.

And it works with two year olds, and it works with I am not kidding psychopathic terrorists, because the FBI uses the same things to calm down a terrorist a psychopath that parenting experts advice we do to calm down our children, and that is to sit down, give them your absolute full attention, get completely calm in yourself, which takes a lot of practice on your own before you're facing it, and say, tell me what you're experiencing, Tell me everything, Tell me everything, and then as they tell

you, you you say, I really get that. I have felt that way. Every anybody going through what you're going through would feel that way. Tell me more, tell me everything, and then say, yep, I get it. I totally feel why you. And I've never had an experience with a person where when I asked them that I didn't empathize with them. They were always doing what I would have done in the same situation. So yeah, I do that.

And there's not really any cont not what like, there isn't conflict when you sit down with somebody who's upset and say, tell me everything. I'm listening. Oh, I get it. There's no more arguments like we have in an argument in our family for a very long time. We have a lot of discussions. Let me tell you how I feel. Oh, I get it. That's it. That's all it is. That's a perfect ending. Um. I think we can all take that with us. But before we end, we have a

bunch of quick questions for our speed around. What is your favorite beverage sparkling more, I'm so boring you are not defined by that, Martha, Okay, favorite trip you've ever taken life the whole damn thing other than that. Every time I go to long to Losy, which is a game preserve in South Africa where I teach people on change your life Safari's Heaven. What is your favorite guilty pleasure? Now that I have in my own room, you gotta understand.

I went from sharing a room with siblings, to sharing a dorm room in college, to sharing a room biasban to sharing a room with Karen, just sharing room and like all this room sharing. Well, now I have my own room. When everybody goes out, I closed the door, I get in a king size bed and I just roll and roll and roll from side to side, just like. I love this. It's a wonderful time. Other than our podcast or your podcast, what is a podcast that you love? Well, Glenn,

and I mean you can't. Oh, and there's another one for those of you who are ex Mormon lesbians. There's one called Latter Day Lesbians that is really good. Well, thank you, Martha. We love you and we can't wait to have you back so we could have an entirely different conversation next time. Thank you guys so much, keep doing your wonderful work, and hugs to all your loved ones. Well, that was an amazing interview, But Sam, should we tell them you have to? This was not our first interview

with Martha. We recorded an entire episode with Martha, and in a way we couldn't have known until the very end, Martha's audio just didn't record, so it's lost in the cloud. But the wild thing about Martha, I think if this had happened with any other guest, the interviews would have been very similar. But what's funny about Martha is like she is so full of wisdom. She's like some I

don't know, she's otherworldly in some ways. And so because of that, we ended up having an entirely different conversation this time than we had last time. And I think that's one of the things that makes her so incredibly fascinating. I mean, I could talk to Martha forever. Amy, I

told you this story. But years ago, she and I were asked by the Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Texas Conferences for Women to do this kind of like fireside chat where I interviewed her in all three places, and selfishly, I asked her three different sets of questions just because I'm always interested in what she's thinking and doing. And she

always surprises me. I really don't doubt that because the two interviews we had, like you said, just took completely different paths, and I was really inspired to ask her at the end of our second interview just about like how she handles conflict, because she seems like someone who just a pro coach is life with this really open, authentic and honest heart in a way that I don't

think I've ever seen anybody do quite like her. And I have to recommend her books because I've read all of her books at this point and they are life changing, so I highly recommend digging into them, especially her newest The Way of Integrity. She's really a gift in many ways. I don't know if I've ever shared this with everybody, Sam, I've shared it with you, but my dream is that

we all go on like a camp retreat somewhere. It would be a nice camp you don't have to rough it, but I feel like Martha Back would be like the best camp leader on earth ever. Thanks for listening to What's her Story with Sam and Amy. We would appreciate it if you leave her of you wherever you get your podcasts, and of course connect with us on social

media at What's Her Story. Podcast What's Her Story with Sam and Amy is powered by my company, The Riveter at the Riveter dot Co and Sam's company, park Place Payments at park place payments dot com. Thanks to our producer Stacy Parra and our male perspective blue Burns m HM