Welcome to The Joy Diet, a menu of ten behaviors you can add to your way of living and thinking to enhance every day’s journey through the unpredictable terrain of your existence. You can add these behaviors gradually and watch your life become steadily more vivid and satisfying. Or you can go on a “crash Joy Diet” to help you navigate life’s emergencies.
The ten menu items are:

• Nothing: Do nothing for fifteen minutes a day. Stop mindlessly chasing goals and figure out which goals are worth going after.

• Truth: Create a moment of truth to help you unmask what you’re hiding—from others and from yourself.

• Desire: Identify, articulate, and explore at least one of your heart’s desires—and learn how to let yourself want what you want.

• Creativity: Learn six new ways to develop at least one new idea to help you obtain your heart’s desire.

• Risk: Take one baby step toward reaching your goal. The only rule is it has to scare the pants off you.

• Treats: Give yourself a treat for every risk you take and two treats just because you’re you. No exceptions. No excuses.

• Play: Take a moment to remember your real life’s work and differentiate it from the games you play to achieve it. Then play wholeheartedly.

• Laughter: Laugh at least thirty times a day. Props encouraged.

• Connection: Use your Joy Diet skills to interact with someone who matters to you.

• Feasting: Enjoy at least three square feasts a day, with or without food.

No matter what your long-term goals are, The Joy Diet, written with Martha Beck’s inimitable blend of
wisdom, practical guidance, and humor, will help you achieve the immediate gift of joyful living in the here
and now. Begin your journey today....

A knowledge of your perfect life sits inside you, just as the North Star sits in its unalterable spot. Where will your North Star lead you?

Discover the answer with this interactive journal, based on the bestselling book Finding Your Own North Star. Take the quizzes and fill out the prompts to figure out exactly what you want and how to use change to propel you toward your North Star—the life you were meant to live. You'll also learn how to:

-         Recognize what you love to do most and turn it into a sustainable career or lifestyle.
-         Listen to your intuition—learn how your body says yes and no to certain people, tasks and environments.
-         Employ techniques and language for empowering yourself, confronting fear, coping with grief, dealing with anger, and achieving joy....

“Explorers depend on the North Star when there are no other landmarks in sight. The same relationship exists between you and your right life, the ultimate realization of your potential for happiness. I believe that a knowledge of that perfect life sits inside you just as the North Star sits in its unaltering spot.”

Martha Beck has helped hundreds of clients find their own North Star, fulfill their potential, and live more joyfully. Now, she shares her step-by-step program that will help you take the exhilarating and frightening journey to your own ideal life. Finding Your Own North Star will teach you how to read your internal compasses, articulate your core desires, identify and repair the unconscious beliefs that may be blocking your progress, nurture your intuition, and cultivate your dreams from the first magical flicker of an idea through the planning and implementation of a more satisfying life. Martha Beck offers thoroughly tested case studies, questionnaires, exercises, and her own trademark wit and wisdom to guide you every step of the way....

The "slyly ironic, frequently hilarious"(Time) memoir about angels, academics, and a boy named Adam...

A national bestseller and an important reminder that life is what happens when you're making other plans.

Put aside your expectations. This "rueful, riveting, piercingly funny" (Julia Cameron) book is written by a Harvard graduate--but it tells a story in which hearts trump brains every time. It's a tale about mothering a Down syndrome child that opts for sass over sap, and it's a book of heavenly visions and inexplicable phenomena that's as down-to-earth as anyone could ask for. This small masterpiece is Martha Beck's own story--of leaving behind the life of a stressed-out superachiever, opening herself to things she'd never dared consider, meeting her son for (maybe) the first time...and "unlearn[ing] virtually everything Harvard taught [her] about what is precious and what is garbage."

"Beck [is] very funny, particularly about the most serious possible subjects--childbirth, angels and surviving at Harvard." --New York Times Book Review

"Immensely appealing...hooked me on the first page and propelled me right through visions and out-of-body experiences I would normally scoff at." --Detroit Free Press

"I challenge any reader not to be moved by it." --Newsday

"Brilliant." --Minneapolis Star-Tribune...

Martha Beck's work as a life coach has been featured on Oprah and has earned her accolades in outlets from National Public Radio to USA Today. More important, her trademark wisdom, empathy, and humor have changed thousands of lives, helping people who felt disconnected from their true sense of purpose to locate meaning in their lives and change.

Now, in the tradition of her bestseller Finding Your Own North Star, Martha Beck reconnects listeners with their authentic hopes, needs, and desires in Steering by Starlight. Beck brings together cutting-edge research in psychiatry and neurology, practical exercises and the step-by-step process she uses with her private clients to offer powerful new methods for solving problems that beset every one of us.

Whether you're seeking better relationships, more focused career direction, specific fitness goals, or a more harmonious lifestyle, Steering by Starlight's colorful and touching anecdotes, case studies and exercises will give you the tools you need to become your own guide and point the way to an authentic, rewarding life....