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Martha Beck Changes Lives With This Question - We Can Do Hard Things | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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Martha Beck Changes Lives With This Question

We Can Do Hard Things

Tue Jan 13 2026

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: We Can Do Hard Things
Episode: Martha Beck Changes Lives With This Question
Date: January 13, 2026
Hosts: Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, Amanda Doyle
Guest: Martha Beck

This episode revisits the very first conversation the Pod Squad had with the renowned author, life coach, and speaker, Martha Beck. As the new year begins, the hosts and Martha dive deeply into what it means to return to oneself, to move away from a life dictated by external consensus and instead follow the warmth of one’s own knowing—the central, life-changing question: "Does this feel warm or cold?" Through personal stories, practical advice, and Martha’s signature blend of wisdom and humor, the episode offers actionable insight into how anyone can start reconnecting with their truest self.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Returning to the Self: Warmth vs. Cold

The Transformative Question (00:30–02:50)
Glennon recalls a pivotal moment when Martha advised her to stop reasoning and instead ask, "When you think about going towards Abby...do you feel warm or cold?" Martha’s simple question redirected Glennon from her anxious thoughts back to her body’s wisdom.
- Memorable Quote:
  Martha Beck: "Get back into your body, and for one moment, I need you to think about what feels warmer." (01:14)
The Power of the Body’s Guidance
This question—what feels warm and what feels cold—becomes a recurring theme throughout the episode as a shorthand for following one’s deepest wisdom.

2. Letting Go of Consensus Living

Living by Others’ Expectations (07:44–09:29)
Glennon describes being stuck in life because she tried to please everyone—her Christian friends said "stay," and her feminist friends said "leave." She realized neither group’s opinion was absolute:
- Quote:
  Glennon: "Good, right, wrong—these are not real things. These are completely subjective...the barking sheepdogs that keep the herd in." (09:12)
Consensus vs. Senses (10:11–11:22)
Martha echoes:
- Martha: "Don’t live by coming to consensus, live by coming to your senses." (10:18)

3. Rock Bottom, Suffering, and the Path to Knowing

How We Lose Ourselves (22:43–24:48)
Suffering signals being out of alignment with the true self. Martha encourages listeners to recognize suffering as a guide:
- Martha: "The single sign that we've lost ourselves is suffering...It’s always telling me that I’ve lost myself." (22:52)

4. Practical Pathways Back to Self

Expressing Rage and Writing the Truth (33:59–35:52)
Martha’s advice for when you’re at your limit:
- "Get out a piece of paper and write what you are sick of...the rage inside you is the wild animal saying ‘no.’" (34:29)
Freedom as the Taste of Truth
Memorable Quote:
Martha: "Enlightenment always tastes of freedom. It may hurt, it may terrify, but it will feel like freedom." (35:52)

5. One Degree Turns: Small Steps to Change

Accessible Action Steps (56:31–57:05)
Martha offers a realistic way to begin, advocating for "one-degree turns":
- Make a list of things you have to do and note which upsets you most.
- Make another list of things that make you happy.
- Replace 10 minutes of the worst task with 10 minutes of what you love each day.
- Repeat weekly for a slow but massive course change.
- Quote:
  Martha: “It’s like flying a plane 10,000 miles and you just turn one degree. Nobody even notices, but if you do that every week, you end up in a totally different place.” (57:02)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On following warmth
Martha Beck: "I tell people just to love each other out loud." (15:23)
On suffering and self-alignment
Martha Beck: "Suffering is always a friend, it’s always an ally—it won’t let us continue to abandon our true selves." (23:30)
On honest living
Martha Beck: "The moment you start lying, your body starts going to hell, your immune system starts to crash." (40:43)
On personal change
Martha Beck: "If you allow yourself to live by love, every time you do something you actually don’t want to do, it’s taking a bit of your life force out." (48:47)
On letting go of consensus
Martha Beck: “The whole cultural thing is about force and pushing...but real love always sets the beloved free.” (48:47)

Engaging Q&A and Real-Life Application

Amanda’s Skepticism & Martha’s Response (25:49–33:20)

Amanda questions the practicality of “just doing what feels warm,” worrying she would never get out of bed or parent properly.
Martha responds with stories of high achievers who, by letting go and following inspiration, “got more done without the suffering.” She references Eastern philosophy, describing how “relaxing into nature” doesn’t mean inaction—it’s about letting energy flow through you.

Personal Revelations and Embodied Stories

Abby shares how Martha’s advice has shaped not only their marriage but how they parent their children, encouraging them to discern what feels “warm or cold.” (19:30–20:40)
Martha and Glennon discuss their own moments of hitting bottom, rage, and eventual freedom through radical honesty and self-trust.

Actionable Takeaways

Warm/Cold Compass: Use bodily sensations (“Does this feel warm or cold?”) as a North Star for decision-making.
Start Small: Make one degree turns—swap 10 minutes of dread for 10 minutes of joy, gradually reclaiming your life.
Rage & Suffering as Guides: See anger and suffering not as enemies, but as signals showing where you’re out of alignment.
Write the Truth: Don’t sugarcoat or “fake positive”—admit to yourself what feels deadening, and then what (even just a little) would feel more alive.
It’s Personal: Only you can know your true instructions—no one else can give them to you.

Timestamps for Major Segments

00:30–02:50: Glennon describes Martha’s “warm/cold” question that changed her life.
07:44–09:29: Realization of living by others' consensus; breaking away from external definitions of “right.”
13:08–15:29: Falling in love with Abby; Martha’s life-changing advice to “love each other out loud.”
22:43–24:48: Martha on suffering as an indicator you've lost connection to self.
25:49–27:18: Amanda’s skepticism and Martha’s reassurance on “following your bliss.”
34:29–35:52: Rage, resentment, and writing down the truth as first steps back to self.
56:31–57:05: Martha’s “one degree turn” method—simple, actionable strategy.

Episode Tone & Vibe

The conversation is equal parts raw, humorous, and deeply compassionate—marked by honesty, personal storytelling, and the kind of soulful guidance that’s both mystical and practical. Martha’s language is vivid, direct, and reassuring, repeatedly circling back to the central message: the information you need is already in your body, and reclaiming your life starts with the smallest, warmest choices forward.

For anyone struggling to know what’s next, feeling disconnected from life, or simply hungry for wisdom that affirms both their struggle and their power—this episode is a layered, living guidebook: Come back to your senses. Start with warmth. Tell the truth. And begin, one gentle degree at a time.

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Transcript

A (0:00)

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. We are starting 2026 with a gift for you. Nothing says New Year's energy like Martha Beck. So today we're revisiting our very first conversation together. Think of this as an invitation for an hour.

B (0:19)

Feel what you feel, know what you.

A (0:21)

Know, and then begin again. Martha has always helped me with that process. She has helped me restart my life, so several times. Not from her advice, but from the.

B (0:33)

Way she constantly guides me back to myself.

A (0:35)

When I first fell in love with.

B (0:37)

Abby, I was the happiest I had.

A (0:39)

Ever been in my life. And I was also deeply afraid. It was like I felt this incredible warmth and comfort and freedom for the first time. But my mind was telling me I.

C (0:55)

Could not have it.

A (0:56)

My mind was trying to control it. My mind was saying, no, no, while.

B (1:01)

The rest of me was saying, yes, please.

A (1:03)

My mind has always been a little stronger than the rest of me, and it was winning. So one day, I called my friend Martha and I told her all of the reasons why I was desperately in love and happy. And then I told her all of the reasons why that love was impossible, why it couldn't happen, why my entire life would fall apart if I did.

B (1:29)

Try to make it happen.

A (1:30)

And I was spinning and spinning and spinning, making a really strong case to Martha about how none of this could happen. And she just said, glennon, stop. I need you to remove yourself from your head, which always makes an excellent case. And I need you to get back into your body, and for one moment, I need you to think about what feels warmer. When you think about going towards Abby, going towards this love, letting yourself have this love, do you feel warm or cold? And I said, warm. And she said, when you consider cutting it off, stopping it, going back to your old life, do you feel warm or cold? And I said, that feels very cold. And she said, okay, well, I'm making dinner now. I have to go. I hope that was enough information for you. Martha is a master of returning us to ourselves, and that is why I trust her today. She will help you return to yourself. She will stop making dinner. She will listen to your spinning brain, and she will return you to the deepest wisdom you have, which is in your body. Pod Squad, we hope you love this episode as much as we do. Let's go, Martha.

C (10:11)

Yeah, yeah. It's so funny that you use the word, the term coming to consensus, because that actually is the way most people live. We look around at the pressures on us from other people and we come to consensus and we choose what makes us fit in best. I actually just started a podcast with my partner Ronan Mangan, and we talk the theme, it's called Bewildered. And the theme is stopping. Don't live by coming to consensus, Live by coming to your senses. So what happens when you realize that the consensus is off? So I was raised Mormon, okay, Like super duper Mormon. And that just turned me into a hardcore atheist by the time I went to Harvard. And I was like, yeah, intellect is everything. Then I get pregnant. I'm having psychic experiences. Like, I am so broken by the diagnosis. I'm not as good a person as you are. So I'm like, I hate life and I want to die. When you get to the place where you hate life and you want to die and you actually let that part of you die, there's still something left and it comes to its senses. It's like it's often a place where no social pressure can reach and it kind of raises its head out of the crowd of the world and says, okay, over here. Oh come here. And it is, whatever your belief system is, a profoundly mystical experience. And I actually did my dissertation on this at Harvard. I had to be very careful about it. But after I had Adam, it was like they said, you've thrown your career away. And I thought, well, I'll just go back to finish my dissertation in Provo, Utah, where I grew up, and everyone will understand why I didn't have an abortion and they'll all be proud of me, which they were. But then I went there and figured out I was a lesbian. So I went to Harvard to Have a child with intellectual disabilities. Then I went to Utah and became a lesbian. And people ask me for advice. I'm telling you, the world is insane. I have no knowledge of anything. I've. But I just know that if you come to your senses in any given moment, the knowledge of what to do next is there. It's not in the brain, but it's in all the senses. It's in every single bit of you once the clamor of consensus is gone.

C (27:18)

Well, you might be surprised actually, because sometimes I send, like I just sent this one client, really, really high achieving, hard driving young man in circles in Washington where he was very influential and all his projects had been collapsing. And I said, you're pushing so hard, like, you've got to stop pushing. Everything in you is straining. And I know for a fact that straining isn't the way to make things work. So he started meditating, came back, and he was doing a little better. And then I said, you know, go even more. So he went out into the wilderness and he stayed there for like a couple of weeks meditating. And he let go of everything. And he literally said, I was ready to do nothing because he had been suffering a lot. And he came out of the wilderness and Afghanistan was happening. The US Started to pull out of Afghanistan and He said within three weeks he had raised $17 million for welcoming Afghan refugees into the U.S. he'd gotten a board together that includes the Clintons, the Bushes and the Obamas. He had all these corporations, not unlike what you guys have done, you know, to get families back together at the border. And he said it was so weird. It was like I. I barely slept. Was I breaking the rules? And I said, no, because when you stop doing things by pushing, there's. As a Chinese major, as an undergraduate, and there's this Chinese saying that when nothing is done, nothing remains undone. And it sounds so weird, but what it means is that when you stop doing things by the struggle of your individual will and you relax into nature, the power of nature itself has intentions, and it has a design for you, and it will pick you up like a river, and it will take every skill you've learned, every bit of talent that you inherited, your position in life, and it will throw you at the problem, and it will get the kids up, and it will do all these things. And then there's this weird sensation. I'm not actually having to do this. It's happening through me. And it's a very weird idea for Americans. I remember coming back from Asia when I was, like, 20, because I went there and studied for a year, and I came back, and I was like, why is everybody so tense in the West? Like, what? And then I realized they think they have to do everything where in Asia, there's this bedrock philosophy that relaxing into freedom allows you to be useful to the Force. And there's no God imagery like there is in Christianity. It's just the flow of goodness. So the place where you are, Amanda, is this. I'm afraid to let go because my pushing is making it work, I think.

C (48:47)

Or husbanding. But the point is, real love always sets the beloved free. So if you allow yourself to live by love, if you were to love yourself, and this social constraint that's trying to keep you in its spider grip says, no, you stay where we want you. You let us take your life force. Every time you do something like that, it's taking a bit of your life force out. And it's a huge risk to stop. It's huge. It is huge to stop doing the things you think you have to do. Because culture says if you don't, your life won't be worth a plug nickel. And then people come in, your kids, your husband. You're like, okay, I'm in the business of setting everything free. So who are you and what do you feel like doing? And I know that's. But everything would go to rack and ruin if we lived that way. I decided to live that way, and everything went to rack and Ruin. I mean, really, seriously, within one year, when I was 29, I decided I wouldn't tell a single lie for a whole year. And I did it. And during that. And by the way, you guys, this is not going to happen to you. But I was in a really weird situation. And so not lying led to me leaving or being left by my community of origin, my whole Mormon thing, my family of origin, which was huge. And I depended on them very much. No contact, my marriage, my job, my profession. I had no money coming in. Like, everything went, except, like, my kids. That was it. And I just waited. I was like, if I live wild, what's going to happen? And what happened is I got this strange job teaching at a business school. And the students there, for some reason started paying me to just talk to them about their lives. Because there was something about a life lived without any of those constraints that made me interesting to them. Something in their wildness looked at me and went, what. What is she doing? Because I had no family constraints, no professional constraints, nothing. I didn't have anything. And it made me able to just follow the river. And then I read in USA Today that I was the most famous life coach in America. And I didn't even know the term life coach. I was like, how the. Did that happen? All right, all right. You know, and people, like, showed up to help me with money and stuff. Oh, oh, all right. And it's that. That was 30 years ago. And I. It's been the same ever since. All I ever do, like, what feels like freedom. I came here along a road where I just did not give a. What anyone said I was supposed to do. I thought I would just run amok. And in fact, I was like, damn, I love almost everybody and I want everybody to be happy. So.

C (52:06)

The reason I did that whole thing about not lying was that I had a surgery. And in the surgery, I had one of those. It wasn't a near death experience because I was pale and hearty, but I was not conscious. And then I was conscious. And then I was watching my body from above. And then I leaned back and this light appeared. And I was ready to. If I hadn't had kids, I was so ready to be dead. And this light came, and it was so exquisite. Like it was more beautiful than anything you could imagine. And it was expanded, and it touched me and filled my body with the most exquisite joy and love and illuminate like it was all that. It's all that in a box of cookies. It's everything people say it is. And I came out of there, out of the surgery, out of the anesthesia, and there was this janitor mopping the floor. And I remember opening my eyes and going, I love you so much. And then the nurses came in. I'm like, I love you all so much. And I talked to the anesthesiologist, and I was like, what is it? Give me more. And he said, no, that he was giving me the anesthesia. And when the light touched me, I started to cry. And my eyes were taped shut, but tears came down, and the doctors thought I was conscious, and I could feel the pain, so they freaked out. And the anesthesiologist was like, oh, my God, she needs more meds. And then he told me he turned to put more medication in the drip, and a voice said, it's okay. She's crying because she's happy. And he said. He told me in terror. He said, I just did what it said. Was I okay? Did I do okay? So I kind of told him what happened to me. And he said, do you know how many times this has happened to me in 33 years of practice? And I said, no. He said, once. And then he kissed me on the forehead and went away. And I lay there in that bed and just sobbing with joy, not knowing what had happened, but saying, whatever that was, it's in charge of the universe, and I will no longer do anything that doesn't feel like the warmth of that light. And that's what I was telling you guys to do with your love, the warmth of that light. And my son Adam, who has down syndrome, when he was 19, his friend became an orphan, his best friend. And his father died, and then his mother died, both from cancer. And we were coming home from the funeral, and Adam said, I didn't cry. And I said, yeah, but it's really sad. And it's okay for strong men to cry at sad times. And he said, it's not as bad after the light comes and opens your heart. And I was like, what? Say what? A light came to you and opened your heart? And he said, in my bedroom. And I was like, when did this Happen. And he said, May 10th. And I was like, this was in, like, February. I was like, this last year? He said, no, it was like five years earlier. And I said, well, what happened? He said, this light came and it touched my heart, and it said, you're okay. You can do this. I'm your teacher. You can do this. And we were pulling into the garage, and I was like, you know what, Adam? I've seen that light. And he was like, oh, whoa. Like, he didn't know I had it in me. And I said, you know, it told me that it's always going to be with me, even though I can't see it. And then he looked disappointed, and he goes, oh, I can see it. And I said, what now? And he was like, yes. I said, well, where is it? Is it, like, up there? Is it over there? Is it in your heart or your head? And he just shook his head. He was like, mom, it's everywhere. It's everywhere he looks. He sees that light. And I am telling you, that's what catches you when you stop doing all the fucking paperwork.