Martha Beck ON: How To Let Go of Fear, Stop Listening to Others, and Learn To Trust Yourself

1. 0:00 – 8:45

   Intro

   1. MBMartha Beck0:00

      You leave your nature to serve your culture, and what that does is it splits you in two. So you're no longer in integrity, you're in duplicity. But you don't actually even know it with the conscious mind. You feel it in the heart, you feel it in the body and the soul, but the mind is clueless. [upbeat music]

   2. JSJay Shetty0:20

      Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world, thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. Now, you know that this podcast is dedicated to try and serve you with insights, thought leaders, thinkers, teachers, and guides that can help us all elevate our minds, bodies, hearts, and souls. And today, I'm joined by the one and only Martha Beck. She's a Harvard-trained sociologist, world-renowned coach, and New York Times bestselling author. She's written nine books and a novel, and her latest book, The Way of Integrity, will be out this spring. Martha is also a life coach and contributor to the O magazine. Her work and multifaceted career has amazed me for years, and I'm so excited to talk to her today about integrity, befriending suffering parts, taking new ones, and changing parts of our life. Martha, it's truly an honor, uh, and privilege to be with you today, and I'm so glad that we're getting to discuss, uh, your amazing new book, The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self. Uh, such an important topic, such an important book at this time. Thank you for doing this podcast.

   3. MBMartha Beck1:36

      Oh, my goodness. The honor is all mine, Jay. I'm a big fan.

   4. JSJay Shetty1:39

      [laughs] Well, I, I really do look forward to meeting you in person. I, I, I feel your energy through the screen already and, and through your voice. And I wanted to start actually with a quote I saw from one of your other books recently, and it's from your book called Steering, uh, by Starlight, and here's the quote. "The variety of an ordinary life is infinite and precious." Uh, and I read that and, and it really struck me because I feel that a lot of what I read today is always challenging me to be extraordinary, or a lot of what I come across or what we see on social media and Instagram is asking people to think big and vast. And when I looked at this quote, I'm not saying that it's opposite to any of those ideas. I just wanted to understand from you, uh, what you mean by an ordinary life and, and why is that such a infinite and precious thing, and why is that quote so powerful? So let's start there.

   5. MBMartha Beck2:42

      The idea is that definitely culturally we are urged to seek the extremes, and what is called happiness, particularly in American culture, but I would say culture around the world now, is actually mania, and the, the points that are supposed to be our happiest times are points where actually, when I work with clients, they're actually feeling super stressed. In my latest book, I talk about this guy who made $400 million in one day when his company went public, and he called me at 3:00 in the morning completely stoned, this rock band r- you know, famous rock band in the background, and he was screaming into the phone, "It isn't enough. When's it gonna be enough?" And I was like, "Dude, all you really like is hiking. Maybe go for a hike sometime." [laughs] So that idea that everything's supposed to be super spectacular works against us. And the opposite of that, not really the opposite, but the alternative, is peace. And I have coached everybody from people in prison, murderers, billionaires, successful celebrities, homeless people. Every single one of them resonates to the, to the idea, "I am meant to live in peace." That is the one thing that feels true to every single person that I've ever coached. And peace is boring to the mania mind, or as you would call it, the monkey mind instead of the monk mind, yeah? So the monk mind goes for peace, yeah? So peace is flat and dull to the mania mind and to the culture. But when you go there, when you meditate every day, you sit, you know, I spent several years out living in a forest, and I would go out and meditate every day. And birds would land on me, for exam- well, I guess that's not completely ordinary, but [laughs] I did sprinkle myself with birdseed, I have to confess.

   6. JSJay Shetty4:29

      [laughs]

   7. MBMartha Beck4:30

      When that happened, I remember the first time a bird landed on my knee while I was meditating, this little bird, and he looked up at my eyes, and the, the love I felt between the two of us just exploded my universe. It was the most incredible thing. Little gray bird, nothing special about it. And that started to, that feeling started to come into everything. A sip of tea. Uh, I mean, there was a lemon tree. I'd pick a lemon and my heart would explode with the experience of it because the mania mind was finally quiet. And once you get to peace or ordinariness, you find that it is vast and much more interesting than the s- the heights, which are weirdly dull when they, uh, if you repeat them too many times, they get very dull.

   8. JSJay Shetty5:18

      Wow, yeah. I mean, so much to unpack there and, and so much to look at because I find that before I was working with people like the ones that you were mentioning, so f- for a lot part, long part of my life, I worked with homeless communities and charity projects and individuals and, uh, young people, uh, whether they were in, you know, coming out of, uh, gang violence or college issues or, or, or early drug use or whatever it may have been. And then when you do work with someone who's wealthy and successful and they have that moment that you just explained of 400 million in, in one day from exiting their company and, you know, having this moment and it not being enough, a lot of people will stop and say, "Well, that's ... easy for them to say because they already have it. But explain to me that, that, that interesting thing that's happening. And, and in your s- in your book that we're talking about, The Way of Integrity, uh, you talk about the desperation for success.

   9. MBMartha Beck6:23

      Yeah.

   10. JSJay Shetty6:23

       And, and I thought that word is so true. There's this desperation for success that exists within all of us, whether we are successful or not successful or on the road. Why is it that desperation so damaging and destructive for us?

   11. MBMartha Beck6:37

       Well, what this whole book is about, it- it's called the, The Way of Integrity, and integrity doesn't mean what most people think [laughs] it does, at least not here. It comes from the word integer, which means one thing, and being in integrity is being whole and undivided. So there's no part of you that's divided from your true self. So when people get, when they're socialized to do something like seek a certain type of success, if that's not according to your true nature and your culture pulls you toward it, you leave your nature to serve your culture. And what that does is it splits you in two. So you're no longer in integrity, you're in duplicity. But you don't actually even know it c- with the conscious mind. You feel it in the heart, you feel it in the body and the soul, but the mind is clueless because it's a cultural tool. That's why I love the saying that the mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. So when we go to serve our cultural ideas of what joy is, we leave our true nature. And always, but always, that causes suffering, which is a, a huge gift because suffering is the only thing that will get our attention enough to say, "Wait, I need to change my life." So if it weren't suffering, we would not pay attention to it, and we would never find the path of our right self, our true self, our one individual path that no one else can ever have. Um, so yeah, being in whole and in integrity m- often means turning off cultural noises and tuning back into one's own true nature.

   12. JSJay Shetty8:09

       I love that distinction you make between nature and culture and how our culture can pull us away from nature. That's, that's so beautifully said. How do we find a culture that reflects our nature? Because I find that that's probably one of the most difficult things, that we all want to be in a culture, I guess that's natural to want to be around others-

   13. MBMartha Beck8:30

       Yeah

   14. JSJay Shetty8:30

       ... that encourage us to become more of our true selves. And I've definitely found that in my own spiritual tradition that I follow and, and the work that I've done. Uh, but I also found that even sometimes that culture was [laughs] taking me away from my true self as well.

2. 8:45 – 22:02

   There is a challenge in creating a community and culture to suit our nature.

   1. JSJay Shetty8:45

      And so how do we start to create the community and culture to suit our nature?

   2. MBMartha Beck8:50

      You begin by asking how do we find the culture that matches our nature. Now, I'm not meaning culture in the sense of, you know, British culture versus-

   3. JSJay Shetty8:59

      Yes

   4. MBMartha Beck8:59

      ... American culture.

   5. JSJay Shetty9:00

      Yes.

   6. MBMartha Beck9:00

      I mean, anytime there are two people in a room, culture is the third guest at the table, right?

   7. JSJay Shetty9:05

      [laughs]

   8. MBMartha Beck9:05

      Every couple has a culture, every family has a culture, w- ethnicity, whatever. There is no culture that is exactly aligned with your true nature. It, it just can't happen. But as you said, we're social primates, so we, we have this biological desperation to be in culture, connected to other creatures like ourselves. In every single case, there will come a moment when you leave your nature to serve that culture, and it may just be a little bit, which is fine. But as you said, like, you left the city culture in London, wasn't serving your spiritual self, went to become a monk. Clearly that didn't totally serve your whole self either.

   9. JSJay Shetty9:45

      Agreed. Agreed. Yeah.

   10. MBMartha Beck9:46

       And what you are doing is not finding a culture, but leading a culture. So you come out of those two experiences and you say, "I will create something that is true to myself." And I love your story in Think Like a Monk about giving your first presentation to an empty room-

   11. JSJay Shetty10:05

       [laughs]

   12. MBMartha Beck10:05

       ... on c- on a college campus, and just nobody showed up and you still gave the presentation. That's what you did. You were purely in your true nature, and you didn't care if culture f- came to be with you at the table or not. You didn't care if there was anyone else in the room, you were gonna serve your nature. And initially nobody came. But truth, integrity, is the sweetest thing that a human being can find. It's the most precious energy. It is peace. And so as you stayed in that energy, you didn't make other people like you. You showed by being yourself how other people could be themselves. So you create a culture in which the only ironclad rule is we all support each other in our uniqueness. And that's new. That, I think, is a new cultural form that if it get, hits a critical mass in our population today, our global population, could actually save the ecosystems, stop war, stop ethnic violence. It's a new phenomenon a- a- in sociology, and your life is an example of how it happens. And I hope mine is, too.

   13. JSJay Shetty11:21

       No, I'm, I'm, I mean, yours definitely is. Thank you. That's very kind of you. I'm, I'm touched by your, uh, uh, wonderful encouragement. It m- it means the world to me hearing that from you. And, uh, it's, it, it, it's definitely fun living it and figuring it out. And, and I think-

   14. MBMartha Beck11:37

       Right

   15. JSJay Shetty11:37

       ... you know, I've, I've had moments in my life where you rightly said where I was trying to make something me, and it wasn't me, and then I was trying to become something that I wasn't, and that wasn't me.

   16. MBMartha Beck11:49

       Right.

   17. JSJay Shetty11:49

       And then eventually you kind of [laughs] settle and let go and go, "All right, let me just be myself," uh, because, because that's where I feel most peace, as, as you rightly said. Tell me about how... I want to go onto a few concepts that I love from the book, but tell me about how someone can know, right now if they're listening, if someone's listening-

   18. MBMartha Beck12:08

       Yeah

   19. JSJay Shetty12:08

       ... or watching us right now and they're thinking, "Martha, this is really resonating with me. This is really connecting with me," how does someone know ... whether they're in integrity or, or feeling unaligned and out of integrity-

   20. MBMartha Beck12:22

       Right

   21. JSJay Shetty12:22

       ... or out of balance in their life? How does someone know? Because I feel that that diagnosis is almost the trickiest thing to do because you don't just go to a doctor-

   22. MBMartha Beck12:31

       It is

   23. JSJay Shetty12:31

       ... and get a scan. It's, it's something-

   24. MBMartha Beck12:33

       [laughs]

   25. JSJay Shetty12:33

       ... you have to do for yourself, I'm guessing, or working with a coach, of course. Uh, but please, please walk me through that and walk us through that. How can someone know whether they feel they're aligned or not?

   26. MBMartha Beck12:43

       Yeah, the first thing is, uh, that you have to notice if there's any degree of discomfort whatsoever, emotional, psychological, physical. Um, one of the things I do when I speak in public, there would be people in the audience, and I'd stop right in the middle of a speech and say, "Is everyone comfortable?" And they'd be like, "Well, yes, of course." And I'd say, "No, seriously, are you really comfortable?" And they would say, "Yes, go on with your speech." And then I'd say, "If you were at home in your bedroom with no one else there, how many of you would be sitting in the position you're in right now?" And no one raises a hand. And then I would say, "Why?" And it would take them like five minutes to kind of go, "Oh, it's not that comfortable." [laughs]

   27. JSJay Shetty13:25

       [laughs]

   28. MBMartha Beck13:25

       And the problem is not that they were uncomfortable, because people can survive a lot. The problem is that they, their bodies knew they were uncomfortable and their minds did not. They looked me dead in the eyes in clear daylight and lied and did not know it. That's duplicity. The culture says to learn, you sit in chairs like this, and, and it goes through a filter. Are you comfortable? Given that I am forced to sit in this really uncomfortable chair in a fairly uncomfortable position, this is tolerable. But the way the brain f- thinks of it is, this is comfortable. So the way I get to someone's integrity is what I call a sense of truth, and you used the word alignment, which is really important. A lot of, uh, traditional cultures divide the self into body, mind, heart, and soul. So you start with the body. Make sure the body, is the body comfortable and relaxed? Because whenever we tell the tr- truth, I don't know if you know this, everything in our bodies strengthens. Whenever we lie, everything gets weaker. Our muscles get weaker. We blink more rapidly. Our heartbeats go up. We perspire more. Um, if you want to weaken someone, have them lie. They literally become physically weak. Um, so once you're telling your own truth, the body becomes relaxed and strong. Then the heart, are you emotionally okay? D- And that, uh, you could be sad or happy, but there should be an undertone of peace, peace, peace. You can be happy in peace, and you can be sad in peace. The peace is separate. And then there's the soul, and the way the soul knows truth is, does it free me or does it liberate me? Like the Buddha used to say, everywhere you know a body of water is the ocean because the ocean tastes of salt, and you know enlightenment no matter what form it takes because enlightenment tastes of freedom. So the soul feels freedom, even if there's terrible fear, terrible pain, whatever. That freedom comes with the truth. The last one to the party is always the mind. [laughs] The mind we worship is like, "What? What? Go back. I didn't get that." Because it's drowning in culture, right? But when you get the mind to say, "Oh, this makes no sense to my culture, but my body is relaxed, my heart is filled with warm- warmth and peace, my soul feels free. Okay, let me check the facts, because they're probably gonna say this is true." And once they're all aligned, you have what I call the sense of truth, which is like a click or a chime or a ring. We actually use words for that cl- that feeling of everything. It's like a puzzle piece going click in the perfect place, and that sensation is integrity.

   29. JSJay Shetty16:07

       Hmm. Beautiful, deep definition of integrity. I've definitely never heard integrity explained that way, and, uh, I, I hope that's resonated with everyone listening. My, my favorite thing that you mentioned was around how telling the truth strengthens our body and, and telling a lie weakens our body, and I think you're so right that you can, you can feel that and you can see that-

   30. MBMartha Beck16:27

       Yeah
3. 22:02 – 32:29

   What could possibly trigger depression and anxiety and how to come out of it?

   1. MBMartha Beck22:02

      central as you can get without going to Pluto. So now I was in this complete sort of atheist materialist culture, and my only really strong imperative as a personality is just please everyone, right? So I sort of adapted to my culture at Harvard and just sort of fit in there, and then I would go back to Utah and try to fit in there. And these two selves were so different that I, I lost my sense of what was true. So I just got incredibly depressed, like constant weeping, couldn't function at all, almost catatonic at a certain point. And I thought, "I've got to figure out what's wrong with me." And I just started turning inward. I went straight into the pain. I went into my inferno. And I went down and down and down until I found the thing that was the most painful thing to me, and that thought, it was the thought, "I don't know what's true."

   2. JSJay Shetty22:58

      Mm.

   3. MBMartha Beck22:59

      'Cause I was so split. And anybody who's been pulled different ways by different loved ones, different jobs, different, um, national cultures or whatever, if you feel that lostness, that's the dark wood that Dante woke up in. I am so lost and I don't know why. And I didn't know what the answer would be, but I knew that the, the pathway was into my own suffering. And it worked. It took a while, but it worked.

   4. JSJay Shetty23:29

      It, it sounds like that's a, it's a scary journey or a journey that requires one to be okay with, as you say in the book, you know, going into the inferno and embracing that fear. How can people today feel more comfortable with discomfort? Feel... Because it's strange. We're talking about getting back to our nature, but it almost takes discomfort and fear and pain to get back to that which seems natural. So it's... Or, or explain that journey to me a bit because I'm just trying to... I'm, I'm thinking about everyone who's listening and thinking, "I don't want to accept that I'm not living in my truth because that's scary. That means-

   5. MBMartha Beck24:14

      Right

   6. JSJay Shetty24:14

      ... I might have to quit my job. It might mean I have to break up with my partner. It might mean that I have to move across country." Like it means a lot of real things, and you work with real people all the time.

   7. MBMartha Beck24:25

      Oh, yeah.

   8. JSJay Shetty24:25

      So I know that you're, you're greatly placed to help people. But that's what I'm trying to understand is, is what does someone do when they're like, "Well, I can't accept the truth because the truth will ruin my life"?

   9. MBMartha Beck24:36

      We are all terrified of the truths w- that will take us away from the culture we belong to, the culture that makes us feel grounded in the world. If there's a truth that we've hidden because it doesn't work with that culture, we are terrified. So where does Virgil take Dante in The Dark Wood of Ere? He takes him to a gate, and he says, "Here's where we're going in," and it says above the gate, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." [laughs]

   10. JSJay Shetty25:01

       [laughs]

   11. MBMartha Beck25:02

       And Dante's like, "I don't think that's a good sign, literally." [laughs]

   12. JSJay Shetty25:07

       [laughs]

   13. MBMartha Beck25:07

       And Virgil just pats him on the hand and says, "Trust me," and they go in, and it's horrible. So what I like to do with clients, and what I do in the book, is find... If you're not completely happy in your life, and I mean completely happy, I think we should be completely happy. So find a thing you're frightened to think about, and you don't need to think about it yet. Just identify it. Like, okay, there's something about my job, and I'm scared to think of it. There's something about my spouse, and I'm scared to think about. I don't wanna think about it, don't wanna think about it, don't wanna think about it. The irony is that the fear is only there because we already know what's inside there.

   14. JSJay Shetty25:45

       Mm-hmm.

   15. MBMartha Beck25:45

       What's inside, as you said, what's on the other side of that may mean a divorce. It may mean, uh, changing a career. It may mean giving up w- scotch, you know? [laughs] And we don't want to. We're as comfortable as we can be, you know, clinging to our little dark wood of ere things. But if we wanna be free, the suffering gets stronger and stronger and stronger. And typically, there are things that, like in Dante's case, a guide shows up. In our case, it might be a book, it might be a teacher, it might be a podcast like yours. But something says, "Walk up to that gate. Just walk up to it." And for me, the scariest thing was when I was 25, and I was now getting my doctorate, so my third Harvard degree, and I got pregnant, uh, for the second time. I was married. And my son was prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome. The fear was like nothing I have ever experienced. And I just walked around Harvard, and I looked at these, I looked at the professors, I looked at the students, and they all looked really pinched and anxious. And I thought, "Geez, this is my third..." I kept thinking, "If I get another Harvard degree, I shall be happy." And it never worked. I was getting more and more tense. And then I thought, "Okay, is it possible for a person with Down syndrome to be happy?" And everything I knew said yes. So I thought, okay, Emerson said beauty is its own excuse for being. Joy is the felt equivalent of beauty. Maybe joy is its own excuse for being. And if that's the case, then anyone who can feel joy belongs here as much as anybody else in the world. The fear I went through for the next several months as I waited, and they said there was a 40% chance he would die at birth, and, uh, all these things. It would ruin my older daughter's life. It would ruin my marriage, everything. Um, I've never experienced fear like that. And it finally pushed me to a point where I broke. I went into the... I went through the door, and I let myself feel all the fear. And it was just this... It was ex- exactly the way Dante describes going to hell, just screams and noise and y- you know, wailing of... And, like, all silent, of course, in my own head. And then in the middle of that whole cacophony, I heard this one whisper that said, "Are you sure? Are you sure? Are, are you sure that's true?" And I was like, "I don't know what's true." And it said, "Hmm, you may wanna think about what's true." And that was the first moment that the fear let go of me, and I was like, I was in the inferno after that. So yeah, life will take you there.

   16. JSJay Shetty28:34

       Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us. That, it's, um, it's a very, that's a very real, uh, result of going into the fear. And I liked what you said there, where you just allowed yourself to feel it and then asked whether it was true. And, and the part that really struck from me from that story was the idea of when you were saying that, "I asked if he still had a chance to be happy," and the answer was yes.

   17. MBMartha Beck28:59

       Right.

   18. JSJay Shetty29:00

       And, and I thought, wow, like, that's, it's, it's, again, again, it's, comes back to the same point of disconnecting from the culture.

   19. MBMartha Beck29:07

       Yes.

   20. JSJay Shetty29:07

       Because the culture makes you believe... I, I remember, I mean, not in any comparison at all, and it, and it's not similar, uh, but just to share it. Like, I remember when I, uh, when I, when I left the monastery, people always told me that I wouldn't be as close to my teachers anymore. And they said, "Well, you know, if you move on, you know, you're gonna get lost in the material world and, and Maya, as it's called, illusion-

   21. MBMartha Beck29:31

       Right, right

   22. JSJay Shetty29:32

       ... and you won't, you won't be able to maintain this." And, and I remember saying to myself, I was like, "I'll never let, you know, I, I don't wanna let go," and this was so important to me because I'd found my soul teachers, and I want to speak with you about that, around soul teachers. And it was really funny because constantly, in different stages of my life, people have said things to me, and that's culture is saying something to me. And actually, culture saying it to me has been a beautiful reminder for me to not make that my reality.

   23. MBMartha Beck30:04

       Right.

   24. JSJay Shetty30:04

       So instead of feeling bitterness towards culture, I feel this, like, gratitude towards culture because every time they say to me, they're like, "Jay, you know when you get married you'll have less time for spiritual things." I was told that when I got married. And, and, and I was like, "Oh, okay, that's a reminder to me to not do less spiritual things, so I'll make sure that I'm more grounded in my spiritual practice." Uh, people said, "Oh, Jay, when you build a business, like, this will happen. When you become an entrepreneur, this will happen." And that was always a good reminder of what I didn't want to let happen.

   25. MBMartha Beck30:32

       Right.

   26. JSJay Shetty30:33

       Uh, and, and that was such a beautiful way of responding to it. But you talk about meeting soul teachers. And when you were sharing earlier, I do feel it's beautiful To find teachers in podcasts and books. But I do feel, and I was lucky growing up in a tradition where mentorship was encouraged and highly, it was part of the culture, and it was a good part of the culture. Uh, so I really strongly believe in coaching. Tell me about how someone finds their soul teacher, knows it's their soul teacher, as you talk about in the book, and give us some of those insights from a few of these chapters so that people who are listening can start thinking about that. Because I think, again, culture hasn't made coaching or mentorship normal. And therefore we kind-

   27. MBMartha Beck31:16

       No, not in this culture

   28. JSJay Shetty31:17

       ... not, so not at all, and so we kind of feel like we're, we're just figuring it out. And, and it's many years after which people are even okay accepting a teacher.

   29. MBMartha Beck31:26

       I-

   30. JSJay Shetty31:26

       They feel that to be an alien concept, to accept a teacher and as an adult. Explain to us why it's... I, I feel like having a human coach is, there's nothing better than that. Like, you n- it needs to be beyond the book, beyond the, the podcast and the book are the starting point, but-
4. 32:29 – 41:50

   A soul teacher is always sent, but it has to be asked for from a place of peace.

   1. MBMartha Beck32:29

      what I believe. I believe that every time you pray or desperately ask the universe for anything, it is immediately sent to you. The answer is always yes, and the response is always immediate. But it always gets sent to your true home address, which is peace. If it were to send what you want to desperation, that would make you move into desperation and just sit there gathering up your, your stuff. But in- instead, if you can be at peace, so you walk right up to your fear, find a moment of peace, and it doesn't have to be a day, it doesn't have to be an hour. It doesn't even have to be a minute. It has to be a moment of peace when you say, "I need help. Please send teachers." And sometimes, for me, they first came in books because that's how I allowed it. Nisargadatta Maharaj, my favorite, one of my favorite soul teachers, and let me tell you, when I saw his book in a cabin in South Africa, I stole it. [laughs]

   2. JSJay Shetty33:27

      [laughs]

   3. MBMartha Beck33:28

      I was like, "I can't stop reading this."

   4. JSJay Shetty33:30

      [laughs]

   5. MBMartha Beck33:30

      "I need it." So I mailed them another copy later when I got home, but I'm like, "I can't, I can't leave this book behind."

   6. JSJay Shetty33:37

      [laughs]

   7. MBMartha Beck33:38

      And sometimes, like my son with Down syndrome, Adam, he was the teacher who came for me. Turned out to absolutely transform my life and bring me so much. The, the, uh, the first bestseller I wrote was a book about how he came into my life and the magic he brought with him. Let me tell you one of my little Adam stories.

   8. JSJay Shetty33:56

      Please, please.

   9. MBMartha Beck33:56

      Once I was listening to a recording of the different planets made by the Voyager spacecraft as it went past. It would take radio signals from the planets and transform them into sound, and they sound really weird. Like, the Earth is like wow-wow-wow-wow. And part, like some of the moons of Jupiter go ping-boo-wah. So my son was walking past as I was playing these. He was like 20. Um, and he doesn't talk very well. And he came into the room and he said, "Wait, what are those sounds? I have those sounds in my body." And I said, "You do?" And he said, "Yeah. Where are you getting them?" And I said, "They're from the planets." And he was like, "Oh, right."

   10. JSJay Shetty34:34

       [laughs]

   11. MBMartha Beck34:35

       And I was like, [laughs] "Why do you..." He said, "It's, it's a call. It's a message." And he put his hand up to his head like a, a telephone receiver. And I said, "The planets are sending us a message that's in our bodies?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "Well, what is the message?" And he said, "That we're safe." And then he just walked away. [laughs] And every now and then he'll just pull one of those out. [laughs]

   12. JSJay Shetty34:58

       [laughs]

   13. MBMartha Beck34:59

       And so he was my teacher. And once I realized-

   14. JSJay Shetty35:02

       Wow

   15. MBMartha Beck35:02

       ... that I could be taught by a newborn with Down syndrome, I was looking for teachers everywhere. And as long as I stay in peace, they pour into my life. You poured into my life. L- And I'm so glad to be talking to you, but through your books and podcasts, you do. I, I mean, every communication you have with your soul teacher feels like this zoom. You feel that ring of truth. This person, this book. And then weirdly, like I, I love Jill Bolte Taylor, the, the Harvard neuroanatomist who had the stroke. Have you, have you talked to her ever?

   16. JSJay Shetty35:39

       I haven't. No, I haven't.

   17. MBMartha Beck35:40

       She's awesome. But she lost the left side of her brain and had to build it back, and the right side of the brain is in the presence of God at all times. So she came back very different. And I've been quoting her stuff and learning from her, reading her books. And the day before yesterday, she just called me. She just Zoom called me, and I was like, "Okay, why are you calling me?" And she's like, "I don't know. I just wanted to talk to you." [laughs]

   18. JSJay Shetty36:03

       [laughs]

   19. MBMartha Beck36:03

       I'm like, "Are you serious?" And she told me all this stuff about neuroanatomy that helped me understand myself. And that's what happens when you just say, I'm, "I'm gonna stay in peace and ask for teachers."

   20. JSJay Shetty36:14

       Okay, you, you just blew my mind, uh, with all of that and, and how you so clearly made the proposal to us all that we can only receive our true teachers and our soul teachers when we're at peace. And actually if we ask for them out of de- uh, desperation and they'll go to that home address, right?

   21. MBMartha Beck36:40

       Right.

   22. JSJay Shetty36:40

       It will shift us. I lo- That blew my mind because- That made so much sense more than intentions. It made more, so much more sense than seeking the right people out. Like, that idea of what place, what space from which are we asking for what we're asking for. And you're absolutely right that we only ever ask for help when things go wrong. We never ask for help when things go right. And also, haven't you often found that a lot of our asking is a demand and not a sincere request?

   23. MBMartha Beck37:15

       Yeah.

   24. JSJay Shetty37:15

       Like, it's a demand of like, "Why is this not happening to me?" Or-

   25. MBMartha Beck37:18

       Yeah

   26. JSJay Shetty37:18

       ... "I need this right now."

   27. MBMartha Beck37:19

       Yeah.

   28. JSJay Shetty37:19

       It's like, and it's the ant- antithesis of peace, as, as you're saying, is where we need to be. It's, it's the anger, it's the pain. It's not asking from a place of a sincere request, uh, you know, which is often what's needed even to get your friend turn around.

   29. MBMartha Beck37:35

       But you know what? Here is how miraculous and benevolent the universe actually is. When you go to peace, the things you screamed for in your tantrums, if they're right for you, will be there, or they will come there. Like, every childhood wish that I'd ever had, when I started, I, I did a sort of monastic period of my life. When I was 50, I just moved out to the woods and spent six years meditating and, and tracking bears, and, um, everything I had ever wanted started to come to me. It was, it was bizarre. Like, people like Jill Bolte Taylor, but this type of miracle started happening over and over and over again. And I would say to the universe, "But I was really fussy when I asked for this." And it would just say, "Oh, sweetheart, we want you to have everything. Why do you think pain exists? So that you'll ask for things so that we can demonstrate our love for you by giving you those things when you're in peace." [laughs]

   30. JSJay Shetty38:35

       Mm.
5. 41:50 – 49:18

   Zeros represent material success and it loses value when our pursuit is aligned in integrity.

   1. MBMartha Beck41:50

      ever coached who has suffered greatly for whatever reason and then found peace makes more peace with the suffering they've experienced.

   2. JSJay Shetty41:59

      Can you say that again? That was beautiful.

   3. MBMartha Beck42:01

      Every suffering is the raw material for its opposite. The more time you've spent in fear, if you go to peace, you have more courage than others. If you've spent more time in depression, you go to peace, you have more joy. You spent time in, um, what, rage. You go to peace, you have more ability to be peaceful and to spread peace. One of my favorite examples is the spiritual teacher Byron Katie. Do you know of her?

   4. JSJay Shetty42:27

      Yeah, I've, I've interviewed her. She's been on the podcast.

   5. MBMartha Beck42:30

      Ah, yeah?

   6. JSJay Shetty42:31

      Yeah.

   7. MBMartha Beck42:31

      Yeah, I was talking to her one day, and she was a woman who was in horrible, horrible depression, every kind of pain, physical, mental, everything. And then she lost the ability to believe her own thoughts and was suddenly in a space of complete peace and bliss because thought- ... is what connects us to culture and, uh, once she lost the ability to be in culture, she was her true self. And, um, I was talking to her one day, and she said something about being, you know, the transformation, and I said, "Well, you can't have been that bad." And she, she looked at me very seriously and she said, "No, I was a very bad person." And she me- she was absolutely serious. She is the most delightful [laughs]

   8. JSJay Shetty43:10

      Yeah

   9. MBMartha Beck43:10

      ... joyful, blissful human being you can imagine. And it's because she was so miserable that when she came to peace her life exploded into joy. So whatever suffering you've got going on, whoever's out there listening, come to peace, and yes, a one will appear in front of those zeros and you'll be richer than you ever imagined.

   10. JSJay Shetty43:31

       [laughs] And what are the, what are those, some of those beginning steps towards peace, Martha, that, that you beautifully lay out in the book? But tell us some of those steps to peace because I think when we think of peace, again, and this is, this is why going back to the concept you've shared with us, when we think about peace, the problem is the understanding we have of peace is the culture's definition of peace.

   11. MBMartha Beck43:51

       Yeah.

   12. JSJay Shetty43:52

       Which is kind of like, you know, like, that's, that's what peace looks like. Like, peace looks like this, this very, like, you know, perfect tranquility. Uh, and, and that's the challenge that when you have that cultural image and vision of what peace looks like, you don't allow for the pathway to peace to look like that. I always feel like we have, we have two, we have two things we're always looking at, our vision of reality and then the actual path we're walking.

   13. MBMartha Beck44:20

       Right. Yeah.

   14. JSJay Shetty44:20

       But the actual path to peace doesn't look like the vision to peace, so we l- we leave it. We, we, we abandon that path.

   15. MBMartha Beck44:26

       Google peace and you get eight million pictures of women in, sitting on a, [laughs] on a deck in the sunset. Uh, y- yeah. And it's like, ugh, huh.

   16. JSJay Shetty44:35

       [laughs]

   17. MBMartha Beck44:35

       That's not, that's not peace, that's boring. [laughs]

   18. JSJay Shetty44:38

       Yeah.

   19. MBMartha Beck44:39

       Actual peace is that alignment I was talking about, the feeling that our bodies, hearts, minds, and souls are all working in the same... They're w- they're working like a team of horses that are exactly matched, and they will go all kinds of amazing places. Like, they'll push you into action as surely as they'll push you into rest. You know, I, I had a, I had a, an autoimmune disease, several actually. Uh, from the time I was 18 to the time I was about 30 I was almost completely bedridden and in constant pain, physical pain. So it was not, um, a fun time. Raised my kids on a king-sized bed, basically. And-

   20. JSJay Shetty45:18

       Wow

   21. MBMartha Beck45:19

       ... um, when I was, uh, as I was trying to find my way out of that, what I realized is that my body was responding to whether or not I was in the truth. I had to connect my truth to, uh, m- my... I had to connect my story in my head to the truth that my body was telling. And then when I started following my body, heart, and soul, as well as my mind, I locked into this thing that I call integrity in this book, but it's also peace. But it was at that point I remember I got diagnosis for one of these, they were all terminal progressive [laughs] autoimmune illnesses with no cure, and I was resting, I was resting. I was in peace, I was in peace. I was meditating. What else do you do when you're bedridden for 12 years? But they'd given me a hotline that I could call. I called this hotline and I said, "I've been resting and resting and resting, and the pain is getting worse." And the nurse on the hotline said, "When your soul wants to dance, then l- lying down is effort and dancing is complete perfect peace."

   22. JSJay Shetty46:20

       Mm.

   23. MBMartha Beck46:21

       Like, dance. Get up, move. Even if it hurts, do what your soul wants. And it completely knocked me out of that whole yoga pose thing. Nothing against yoga. But I realized that, um, true peace pulls us through life by all four of those, body, heart, mind, soul, and into joy and into wonderful, amazing situations. It's put you behind that microphone right now. Like, it's not static.

   24. JSJay Shetty46:48

       [laughs]

   25. MBMartha Beck46:49

       It's ecstatic. It's dancing.

   26. JSJay Shetty46:52

       [laughs] Tell, tell me about the opposite, Martha. I, I'm intrigued by something because, um, I, I learned about, and I'm sure with your studies you've come across this too or, or studied with it. I was, I was very much, uh, trained in the path of bhakti, bhakti yoga, uh, which is the path of devotion and love. And the idea was that, or, or, or a core idea is that when one has true love and true compassion and true joy, one can even experience stress for the object of our love. Or the idea-

   27. MBMartha Beck47:29

       Yeah

   28. JSJay Shetty47:29

       ... of stress doesn't feel like stress anymore.

   29. MBMartha Beck47:32

       Right.

   30. JSJay Shetty47:32

       Uh, because you... And, and the closest thing can be described, and you've lived this, uh, through your beautiful examples and stories in, in one of the deepest ways, is the, the closest example or comparison that would be made is the idea of love, uh, of a mother for her child.
6. 49:18 – 52:54

   When don’t we see stress as peace because it's based on love.

   1. MBMartha Beck49:18

      it as helping me. So I loved it. I was like, "Deeper pressure, please."

   2. JSJay Shetty49:22

      [laughs]

   3. MBMartha Beck49:23

      Um, you know, whereas it, it was all about how I was thinking about it. And if we apply that to stressful situations like somebody's screaming in your face, you can actually go into that and go, "Where is the, where is the beauty? Where is the lesson? Where is the healing?" There's always a healing in it. You can always find, if you're caught on anything negative, you, you know something in you needs to be healed. Because if nothing needs to be healed, nothing hooks you like that. Nothing is distressful. You look at it and you go, "Ah, this could go well." [laughs] Like, and, and you're like, you're such a living example of that. It's so funny.

   4. JSJay Shetty50:02

      I think you hit the nail on the head when you said the words, and I want everyone to write this down, it changes when you interpret it as helping.

   5. MBMartha Beck50:12

      Yes.

   6. JSJay Shetty50:12

      That's the key. Like, what you just said there with the massage example, which I thought was brilliant, is even when we're experiencing pain, when we interpret that as helping us, not hurting us, then it heals us. And, and as soon as we interpret it as, "This is hurting me," it actually stops helping us and stops healing us. Because at least in the massage, you know someone you're working with has expertise, but sometimes when we're being badly handled by culture or people around us, we think that they're damaging us. But even then, there is help there, and that's what you're pushing us to seek-

   7. MBMartha Beck50:53

      Yeah

   8. JSJay Shetty50:53

      ... which-

   9. MBMartha Beck50:53

      You can always find it if you're willing to walk the path of your integrity.

   10. JSJay Shetty50:56

       Yeah.

   11. MBMartha Beck50:56

       Don't get pulled into the story of the culture. Find integrity. Find integrity. So you, you find all the places inside yourself where what you believe is not true for you, and this is the source of all suffering. And I say this after 30 years of doing this coaching stuff. The single reason for psychological suffering is believing something in the mind that is not true at the deepest level. Once ... And that's going through the inferno. You get rid of those lies. And then Dante walks up purgatory in the next part of The Divine Comedy, which is where you take the new truth that you found in your own heart, mind, body, and soul, and you begin to live it, even if the people around you don't agree. You know, in your case, even if your parents were like, "Becoming a monk? What's wrong with you?" Or your spiritual friends going, "Don't get married," uh, you're walking your true path. That's purgatory, and it strengthens you. Uh, you go upward and upward and upward. And when you reach the place where your thoughts are completely clear and your actions are aligned as well, so now you've put activity into it. You've put that, the, the joy of movement in peace, the ecstasy of that. You get to the top of purgatory, and Dante just flies off into paradise [laughs] at this point. And I do believe he had an enlightenment experience. And I was just talking to Jill Bolte Taylor about how that works neurologically. It's a real condition to which we are biologically predisposed, and that's what everyone is actually, in their heart and soul, trying to find.

   12. JSJay Shetty52:28

       Beautifully said, Martha. Absolutely beautifully said. And I, I only wanted to add this because I think it relates to what you were saying there, is that often people feel that as you go on that journey, at one point, everyone's going to agree with you and everyone's going to somehow love you and everyone's going to s- [laughs] And, and, and that doesn't happen. And, and, you know, that's, no matter how much in integrity you're

7. 52:54 – 59:47

   The single reason for psychological suffering is believing something is not true.

   1. JSJay Shetty52:54

      living, that doesn't mean that everyone loves you, believes in you, and thinks you're amazing.

   2. MBMartha Beck53:01

      Can I tell one more story? [laughs]

   3. JSJay Shetty53:02

      Oh, please. I'd love for you to ... Yes, absolutely.

   4. MBMartha Beck53:04

      Okay.

   5. JSJay Shetty53:04

      I'd love ... I had to, I had to t- I had to take it there because I think we also, again, have this culture view of, if I live in integrity and if I'm aligned and if my actions are perfectly manifesting and I'm spir- then all of a sudden everyone's gonna believe in me and agree, and I haven't experienced that at all. The more I've gone into integri-

   6. MBMartha Beck53:23

      Oh, thank you, again

   7. JSJay Shetty53:23

      ... the more I've gone into integrity, the more I realize, um, there are more people who have issues with that. So it's-

   8. MBMartha Beck53:31

      Oh, yeah

   9. JSJay Shetty53:31

      ... it's not, yeah, it's not become easier. So I'd love to hear your story.

   10. MBMartha Beck53:33

       Okay. So when I was 29, I decided that I was not going to tell a single lie for a whole year. Um, it was a New Year's Eve, um, resolution. Later on when I needed therapy from this [laughs] my, my therapist told me that my biggest problem was I kept my New Year's resolutions.

   11. JSJay Shetty53:50

       [laughs]

   12. MBMartha Beck53:51

       But I did not tell a single lie the year of, uh, of being 29 to 30. I, I don't tell lies now either. I just decided no lies at all. Um, I found my true self that year. That was the year my body started to heal. I also lost my religion, my family of origin, which is very deeply part of that religion, so complete no contact, every friend I'd made growing up before the age of about 17, um, my job, um, a- and my marriage. And I, I realized I was gay. [laughs] This was not a year of everybody coming to my side. I was ... This is what I came out thinking. For the first time in my life, I was healthy and happy, and there was no part of culture [laughs] that was on my side. And I realized that if I want to walk my particular path, I have to give up Like, I, I w- your integrity will give you every single thing you need to be happy, everything, the wildest dreams, the deepest love, the joy- the most joyous experiences, but it will cost you absolutely everything else. And yeah, my whole life changed from that, and that's when I started coaching, and that's when I, I started getting published, and everything just went from there. But I, I was stripped down to bone by total integrity. I don't recommend that, by the way. It's too rough.

   13. JSJay Shetty55:20

       Martha, this has been such a joy speaking with you and learning from you today. Everyone, uh, I've been talking to Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self. The book's available now. Please, please, please make sure you go and study this deeply. This isn't one of those books that, um, you're just gonna read once and, and kind of, you know, put it on the shelf and think, "God, that was cool." It's, it's, it's gonna be a book that you study. It's a book that's going to make you reflect. It's a book that you want to sit with. Use it as a workbook. Uh, use it as a book where you're... And, and I love, I love what Martha's done here. There's so many fantastic reflection moments and questions that I really think you need to sit with, and, and you may even sit with some of them sometimes a day, sometimes a week. Uh, allow yourself to really use this book as a workbook. And, and I can't, I can't stress enough how I think how powerful it would be to, to feel like you're living in integrity, as well as learning all the amazing new skills and all the passion projects you want to build and all that kind of stuff you want to do. It comes from this. This is actually the root of it, and sometimes when we don't start here and we get started on everything else, we either get everything and it doesn't fulfill us, or we don't get it at all because we weren't asking from a place of peace. And so-

   14. MBMartha Beck56:35

       Right

   15. JSJay Shetty56:36

       ... I, I really want you all to start here. And, um, Martha, as you know, as, as you listen to the podcast and, and, and sharing your, uh, wonderful thoughts about it, we end every episode with a final five, which is our fast round questions. Uh, every answer has to be one word or one sentence maximum. I always break the rules because I get too intrigued. Uh, but-

   16. MBMartha Beck56:59

       [laughs]

   17. JSJay Shetty56:59

       ... but let's see how I go. Uh, so Martha, these are your final five. Are you ready?

   18. MBMartha Beck57:04

       Yes.

   19. JSJay Shetty57:04

       Awesome. Okay, so question number one: What is one widely accepted rule that you always break?

   20. MBMartha Beck57:12

       Please people.

   21. JSJay Shetty57:14

       Hmm.

   22. MBMartha Beck57:14

       Sorry, that was two words.

   23. JSJay Shetty57:15

       That's a great answer. No, that's a great answer. Very good answer. Okay, second question: What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

   24. MBMartha Beck57:22

       Trust yourself.

   25. JSJay Shetty57:24

       What's the worst piece of advice you've ever received?

   26. MBMartha Beck57:27

       Trust me, [laughs] from someone else. [laughs]

   27. JSJay Shetty57:31

       [laughs] That's so good. That's so good. All right, question number four: Uh, what's one thing you know to be true but a lot of people may disagree with you on?

   28. MBMartha Beck57:42

       We are all perfect.

   29. JSJay Shetty57:44

       Beautiful. And if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

   30. MBMartha Beck57:51

       Be nothing but yourself. That's kind of a theme. Like you could've just asked one question. I only have one an- answer. [laughs]

Episode duration: 59:47