QUOTE : My first night with Beck, she told me, 'I had many times in my life where I could have either chased despair or been weird. I chose weird.' Beck says that a third of people who sign up for life-coach training don't know what they want from it. They are looking for something different. Something weird. This is where Beck comes in with her shaman friends and her psychic ponies. Her coaching is designed to give women permission to be weird, because who knows? Beck believes that weirdness, or being open to weirdness, is the key to a more meaningful existence. Dorothy Dix advised women on how to disguise their weirdness; she believed there was always a way, even without a husband, for a woman to contribute to society. Dear Abby and Ann Landers were dogged in their insistence that were only a select number of ways to live. Beck continues in the tradition of Mildred Newman, training her followers to ignore the judgements of others and their own self-doubt. But Newman was concerned only with the health and satisfaction of her patients and readers, wheres Beck thinks all this self-care leads to something awesome, in the most literal sense of the word, that it generates miracles and time travel and a new world order. She senses, perhaps, that this is what her readers need to hear. Newman's followers, especially the celebrity set, were focused on and delighted by their own achievements, but Beck's followers are more self-conscious and coy. Their self-care needs to be justified.