Real Life, in Perspective
Drawing from the accomplishments, triumphs and challenges of her personal experiences, Phoenix’s own Martha Beck offers up a uniquely fresh perspective on life that has America (including Oprah) taking notice
By: Chris Klonoski See the full cover story, featuring Martha Beck, in this month’s issue of Generation Health, available now. Meet Dr. Martha Beck.  Martha Beck is not just a life coach, she is THE Life Coach. She is a real life coach, which is not to be confused with the I-need-a-new-career-so-I-will-print-up-business-cards-with-the-title-“life-coach,” life coach. Let me put it this way: Martha Beck is Oprah’s life coach. Enough said.
Luckily the wisdom and humor of Martha Beck can be found in the pages of her multiple books, for free on the Internet and in her many columns written for Mademoiselle, Real Simple, Redbook and O, the Oprah Magazine. As you would expect, Beck is exemplary. Having earned three degrees from Harvard, of course she has something to offer us. What you might not expect, is how easy she makes taking that something. Her own life, with its overwhelming accomplishments, could have easily become an alienating force. Instead, by using specific, private details from her experience, Beck is able to illustrate common predicaments, and often, surprisingly simple solutions. Simple, though not necessarily easy. With a BA in East Asian Languages and Civilizations (“Chinese basically”) and a Masters and PhD in Sociology, Beck began her earning career teaching, “and I got really bored,” says Beck, who now resides in Phoenix. “I love the Social Sciences but I hate just teaching theory and not actually doing anything with it.” So she switched to Business School, working with students at Thunderbird School of Global Management, which she describes as a “wonderful place and the students were just incredible. They were the ones who started asking me to coach them and I was like, ‘Really? I’ve never heard of such a thing.’ But, whatever, it was working and the rest is history.” Though she is no longer able to dedicate the time necessary to shepherd individual clients, Beck trains others who tout their “Martha Beck” certification. She will occasionally work one on one with “special cases that interest me—someone who is in prison or somebody who is homeless on heroin, people who are genocide survivors. I go for hard cases to try to get better technique and make sure that it works for everybody.”  Maybe she is so accessible, and so comforting, because her own life has not been without challenge and heartbreak. She has suffered from fibromyalgia for almost 30 years. A mother of three, she chronicled the birth of her son, who has Down’s Syndrome, in the very moving Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth and Everyday Magic. She left the close-knit Mormon church and has written candidly about the abuse she endured as a child. She is divorced, yet describes her marriage as “a great run—it was a lot of fun” without a hint of bitterness, or even nostalgia. And rather than resting on the esteem and inevitable proceeds that follow a blessing from Oprah, she channels her funds and energy into rewarding, yet exhausting, charitable trips to Africa.
Her career seemed to benefit from the same recipe of equal parts knowledge and kismet. “I couldn’t get rid of the clients. I had no intention of doing it [life coaching]. I couldn’t understand why they were coming to me. I did not see anything I had to say as being worthwhile, but they just would not leave me alone.” Beck continues, “I went to speak once at a life coaching convention. I had never met another life coach. I didn’t call it that until I read in USA Today that I was the life coach best-known in America. Really? The other coaches said, ‘What’s your marketing platform?’ and I very truthfully told them it was concealment and evasion.” Even Oprah was by chance. “That was sort of random, too. My very first book was academic and sold about three copies. It was sitting in a magazine office in New York and a temp editor knocked it onto the floor and started picking up the pages and reading them and she really liked it. Five years later she became the editor in chief of The Oprah Magazine and called me—so, that was just total chance—and then the [Oprah] show was completely chance again. An associate producer was at the dentist’s office and read an article I had written in Real Simple and liked it. The producer who put me on the show didn’t even know I was already writing for the magazine. It was totally disconnected—and yet always connected. When everything keeps taking you to the same destination randomly, it starts to feel like it’s not random.” Meeting Oprah was “like meeting a lion. I’m not easily intimidated and she doesn’t try to intimidate. But it’s like you run into a wall of energy, like the Empire State Building. She has enormous amounts of energy. That’s all I can say. You feel like you’re walking up to a nuclear power plant or something. [It is] much, much more intense than it is on TV. Oprah is just this huge, huge energy.” Which begs the question, does America’s most powerful and influential celebrity suffer from some of the same insecurities and doldrums as an average person? Beck is measured in response, “Every single person is facing exactly the same feeling of being overwhelmed. Life is a struggle for almost everyone, until it isn’t. It has absolutely nothing to do with how wealthy or famous or smart or educated, or anything you are. People just think that the things that they lack are the reasons they feel like they are struggling. Getting rich or famous or having a dream come true makes you happy for about 15 minutes and then you’re back in whatever frame of mind you were in going into it.”
Want to see Martha Beck in person?
Join Martha and the American Heart Association at 6th Annual 2010 Phoenix Go Red for Women Luncheon on May 14 at The Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel. Beginning at 9:30 a.m., the day-long event will feature educational sessions, vendor expos, health screenings and lunch with keynote speaker Martha Beck.
Heart disease is the number one killer of women; more than 4500 women die from heart disease each year in Arizona alone. Join in the crusade against this fatal disease, all while receiving exclusive insights from the nationally recognized life coach Oprah has called, “One of the smartest women I know.”
For more information on or tickets to the 6th Annual 2010 Phoenix Go Red for Women Luncheon, contact Lori German at 602.414.5358 or lori.german@heart.org, or visit AmericanHeart.org.
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