How many of us drift through life not sure of what we want to be when we grow up - whether we are 12, 18, 45, or 70? Finding Your Own North Star gives you the tools to find out, and along the way, author and career coach Martha Beck brings her perfect-pitch humor to the human dilemmas of work and life. I am not a fan of self-help books, but this one managed to charm and entertain me from the first page. Her genius lies in encouraging the knowledge one might call our "gut-feeling", or "essential self": the knowledge contained in the body but often overridden by the mind, or by what she calls our "social self". Her argument is that the essential self always knows what we most want to do with our lives, but we have lost touch with it, and so we become lost and confused as we try to steer our lives. We need a north star to guide us, and her exercises, sprinkled throughout every chapter, are a pathway toward it. Through them, we can have more of a conversation with the essential self, and use its desires and knowledge to live a wiser, more fulfilled life.
I have recommended this book to numerous people of all ages, because I think we all can learn a little something about how to live a more authentic life, in greater alignment with what brings us the greatest happiness and fulfillment.