Martha Beck

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 home 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 gonna 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.