"If you feel like you're blowing up your life, ask yourself if the opposite is true. Maybe you're bringing your real life into being for the first time."
A perspective-shifting conversation on beating anxiety and the power of creativity and community, with life coach and self-help legend, Martha Beck
For some time now, I’ve been wondering how to give subscribers the inside track on The Shift podcast, whilst keeping it free for everyone to listen. (It’s important to me that everyone can access these often life-changing and air-punching conversations where women over 40 share their wisdom and experience.)
Then, last week I interviewed life coach and self-help legend Martha Beck about her brilliant new book Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, creativity and finding your life’s purpose for next week’s episode of the podcast (dropping on Tuesday, 24 Feb, 1am GMT, get it in your diaries). Our conversation, about anxiety and creativity and forcing ourself into boxes that no longer (and, frankly, never did) fit us, and how to get out of them, felt so utterly necessary for right now – and so perspective-shifting for me personally – that I want to let The Shift’s community of paying subscribers in on it ahead of time.
A heads up! This slightly abridged transcript is long, so grab a cuppa and set aside 20 minutes or so to let it sink in. (And do still give it a listen when it goes live on Tuesday because you really do have to hear Martha tell it in her own words.)
I first encountered Martha Beck when I was editor-in-chief of Red magazine, and I went to an Oprah convention in Atlanta. I know, I know, I can literally hear everyone who knows me IRL roaring with laughter. So, yes, I went to Atlanta to see Oprah, with my friend Viv. But really I went to see the woman who Oprah described as ‘one of the smartest women I know’: Martha Beck. Martha is a Harvard-trained sociologist and life coach who was Oprah's no-nonsense agony aunt on O magazine for almost two decades. She has not one, not two, but three degrees, and is the author of 10 best selling non-fiction books, including Steering by Starlight, which regular listeners might have heard
raving about on a recent episode. And it's not just me, Lindsay and Oprah. Martha is beloved by such self help luminaries as and Glennon Doyle.Her new book Beyond Anxiety could not be better timed.
Martha joined me from her home in Pennsylvania to give us all a massive pep talk on how to manage our anxiety. We also discussed surviving the 3am panic spiral, why she only got a handle on her own anxiety at 60, being a ‘late-blooming lesbian’ and whether putting a bomb under your life really is destructive or constructive…