Martha Beck Changes Lives With This Question

Summary of Martha Beck Changes Lives With This Question

by Treat Media and Glennon Doyle

58m•January 13, 2026
Listen to Episode

Overview of We Can Do Hard Things — Martha Beck Changes Lives With This Question

This episode revisits Glennon Doyle’s first long conversation with Martha Beck. It’s a one-hour guide to returning to your inner wisdom (what Martha calls “coming to your senses” or your North Star) instead of living by social consensus. Through personal stories—Glennon’s awakening to love, Martha’s Expecting Adam experience, and examples from their lives—the episode teaches practical ways to recognize when you’ve lost yourself and how to begin reclaiming freedom, joy, and integrity.

Main themes & stories

  • Warm vs. cold test: Martha’s simple body-centered question that helped Glennon choose a life of true love—“Which feels warmer?” —to move out of paralysis caused by the mind.
  • Love each other out loud: Simple instruction Martha gave Glennon and Abby that guided their public life and family healing.
  • Suffering as a compass: Suffering signals you’re living by consensus (external expectations) rather than your inner guidance.
  • Coming to your senses vs. coming to consensus: The difference between living according to social norms and living according to embodied knowing.
  • Martha’s life arcs: academic/professional pressure, Expecting Adam story (facing an amniocentesis result, choosing life), discovering her sexual orientation, and the “no-lie” experiment that led to radical change.
  • Practical integration: balancing committed effort (“both/and”) and surrendering to a larger flow or “river” that carries purposeful action.

Key takeaways & insights

  • The body holds truth: If your head argues one thing but your body feels warm toward another, follow the warmth.
  • Suffering is a gift: It tells you you’ve disconnected from self and points to what needs to change.
  • Truth relaxes; lies tense: Habitual lying (including fake positivity) drains health and energy.
  • Freedom feels like freedom: Real changes leading toward your true life will taste like liberation even if they’re scary or painful.
  • Both effort and flow are needed: Skill, training and hard work matter, but so does letting the larger force work through you.
  • Small consistent changes create big shifts: One-degree turns accumulate into major course corrections.

Practical steps & exercises (what to do next)

  1. Warm/Cold test

    • When stuck, ask: “If I go toward X, do I feel warm or cold in my body?” Use that bodily sense as data.

  2. Suffering check

    • Notice where you’re suffering; treat it as a signal that you’re living by consensus rather than your own guidance.

  3. Rage/Truth writing

    • Write down everything you hate and the forbidden thoughts you’ve been suppressing. Turn those into clear requests to yourself and others; then cross out others’ names and put your own—this becomes a self-directed instruction.

  4. One-degree turns (daily 10-minute swap)

    • Make two lists: things you must do and things that make you happy.
    • Replace 10 minutes a day of something you hate with 10 minutes of something you love. Repeat weekly and expand—small shifts compound.

  5. Practice observer/meditation

    • Build a habit of getting into the “observer” space so you can notice when action is happening through you rather than forcing everything.

  6. Tell the truth more

    • Reduce fake positivity; speak truthfully about what you feel to reclaim energy and integrity.

Notable quotes

  • “Remove yourself from your head… get back into your body. Think about what feels warmer.”
  • “All you ever have to do is love each other out loud.”
  • “Every truth makes us relaxed and every lie makes us tense.”
  • “Enlightenment always tastes of freedom.”
  • “When nothing is done, nothing remains undone.” (Chinese saying Martha references)

Guest background (why Martha matters here)

  • Martha Beck: bestselling author, life coach and Harvard-trained social scientist. Author of Expecting Adam, Finding Your Own North Star, The Way of Integrity, and others. Recognized as a leading life coach whose work blends science, spirituality, and humor.

Who will benefit / When to use these practices

  • Anyone feeling stuck, numb, resentful, exhausted, or living on autopilot.
  • People torn between others’ expectations and their own desires.
  • Those who want practical, low-friction ways to start shifting toward authenticity—especially caregivers and busy parents who can’t make radical overnight changes.
  • Use the one-degree-turn method today: swap 10 minutes of an obligation for something that warms you.

Martha will return in a follow-up episode to answer practical questions about intuition and how to apply these practices in daily life.