The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self - Softcover

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Martha Beck is a bestselling author, life coach, and speaker who specializes in helping individuals and groups achieve greater levels of personal and professional success. She is the author of nine nonfiction books and one novel, and has been a longtime contributor to O, The Oprah Magazine. She holds a PhD in sociology from Harvard.

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1.

Lost in the Woods

Like many compelling adventure stories, The Divine Comedy begins in the middle. "Midway through the journey of our life," says Dante, "I found myself in a dark forest, for the right way was lost." He doesn't mention how he got to the woods, what he was doing when he wandered off track, or how far he's gone. All this information is-literally-foggy. The only thing Dante really knows is that he's alone, adrift, and confused.

The experience of noticing we're on the wrong path, in what feels like the wrong life, comes to almost all of us at some point. A few years into a job, a relationship, or a living situation, we may suddenly realize that everything seems . . . off. Like Dante, we're a bit dim about exactly what's wrong, or how we got here. But in an empty moment when we've finally gotten the kids off to school, or we look up from our desks at the office and notice everyone else has gone home, or we've just had another ghastly fight with the person we thought we'd love forever, we stare into space and think, "What am I doing? What is this place? How did I get here? It wasn't supposed to be this way!"

This is often how people are feeling when they consult me. I've sat through countless first sessions with clients who are so baffled by their own dissatisfaction they can barely find words to describe it. They stammer, "I wish I knew my purpose," or "People say 'Follow your passion,' but I have no idea what mine is," or "I thought working hard and providing for my family was the right thing, but I feel so empty." A few of these people are clinically depressed or physically sick. But mostly, they're just lost.

The most common reason we end up feeling this way is by doing what we're "supposed to." We learn from our culture how a good person is supposed to behave, and we behave that way. Then we expect the promised rewards: happiness, health, prosperity, true love, solid self-esteem. But the equation fails to balance. Even after doing everything we can to be good, we don't feel good. Confused, we figure we're somehow not doing enough, or not doing it the right way. But the harder we work at finding the path to well-being, the less well we feel.

I've worked with many people who were so far gone in the dark wood they didn't remember anything else. By the time they came to me, their disorientation had become extreme. There was Jim, the physician who grew more and more repulsed by the thought of touching people until he finally had to close his practice. Or Evelyn, the magazine editor who, though a ravenous bookworm at home, gradually lost the energy to track simple paragraphs at work. Fran, a devoted mother of four, began forgetting so many of her children's playdates and school events that the whole family lived like a herd of spooked horses, nervous and jittery. None of these people was mentally ill, just far gone in a hazy wilderness.

I recognize this murky terrain. Know it well, in fact. I've been to the dark wood of error so many times I should have set up a hot dog stand somewhere in there. From childhood, my one overarching life directive was Do whatever it takes to win approval. Raised in a devout Mormon family, I obeyed every rule of my religion and worked hard at school. Then I went off to Harvard, which was about as far from my childhood culture as I could get without moving to Pluto. I managed by letting everyone I encountered assume that I agreed with them, passing for a devout Mormon at home and a rational atheist at school.

This strategy worked perfectly (approval everywhere!) except that after a while I couldn't move. Physically, I mean. At the ripe old age of eighteen, I developed mysterious, excruciating soft-tissue pain all over my body. I couldn't focus mentally. I started binge eating. I felt out of control and broken and borderline suicidal. I had to take a year off school, the better to focus on my complete physical and emotional deterioration. Oh, I was quite the little ray of sunshine.

Looking back at that experience and the stories of so many clients, I feel enormous gratitude for all our confusion, and despair. Those feelings meant that our internal guidance systems were working perfectly, signaling "WRONG WAY!" as clearly as they could. With nothing but the best of intentions, we'd lost the way of integrity. Suffering arose from our bodies and hearts as a result-and riveted our attention on fixing the problem.

Dark wood of error syndrome

There have probably been times when you, too, have departed from your own true path. At first, the resulting suffering may have been so mild you didn't even notice it. But no one can sleepwalk away from integrity indefinitely, because things get worse the further we travel in the wrong direction. Eventually, if we don't correct course, we begin displaying clusters of characteristic symptoms. You may have had them in the past. You may have them now.

I call any cluster of these symptoms "dark wood of error syndrome." Again, it's not a bad thing. It's the way our instincts motivate us to regain our integrity. It's the truth come to set us free. Which doesn't mean it's fun. In the remainder of this chapter, I'll describe the symptoms of this syndrome. As you read, ask yourself if you're experiencing any of them.

Dark wood of error symptom #1:

Feeling purposeless

The most common reason people give for hiring me as a coach is that they're desperate to find a sense of purpose. Very few actually want to die, but many tell me they see little point in living. They echo the Biblical lament in Ecclesiastes, "I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, and behold; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind." In other words, "Life is hard. We're all going to die. WTF?" Without an authentic sense of purpose, it's hard to feel that the daily grind of a human existence is worth the trouble.

In modern Western culture, most of us believe that we can find a sense of purpose by achieving something. What something, exactly? That depends on how the people around us define "value."

My job is like watching a parade of the various things different cultures tell people to value. One day I coached a woman who believed that a purpose-driven life involved suing lots of people and wearing several pounds of diamond jewelry everywhere, including the dump. My next client was equally convinced that a purposeful life meant living in a cabin off the grid and using leaves as toilet paper. Some people think purpose means having a corner office. Others try to become movie stars, save the rain forests, or make viral videos of their pet hamsters.

Any of these ambitions might actually match your true purpose. If so, you'll feel a powerful inward compulsion to follow that particular path. You'll find the steps along the way fascinating and fulfilling, and as a result you'll be good at them. But if you pursue any course of action solely because other people think it's "purposeful," prepare to hit dense fog. You'll encounter baffling failures. You won't get along with people. You won't be able to drum up the energy to climb the success ladder-or for that matter, to wash your hair.

Maybe you're thinking, "Well, of course I feel awful-I never get the things I want!"

If so, I wish you could meet the people I know who've reached the pinnacle of our society's idealized achievements, only to realize that, as one woman told me, "There's no there there. I thought there was a position in the world that would make me feel good, but I got to that position and didn't find anything that made me happy. It all seemed pointless."

"So I won an Olympic gold," one client told me. "And as I climbed down from the podium, the only thought I could think...