Build a Balanced Life

Hope’s Door New Beginning Center is hosting a workshop, Building a Balanced Life and Support Systems, on Saturday, January 20, 2024 at 2pm at Haggard Library. During this workshop, you will gain a better understanding of your unique, well-being needs and how to find balance when feeling stuck. This class is open to adults, and registration is not required.

If you’re looking for books to help you along your way to a balanced life, whether it is for physical health, personal relationships, career, or finances… the library can help you there. Take a look at our recommendations below.

General

The Cure for Burnout: How to Build Better Habits, Find Balance, and Reclaim Your Life by Emily Ballesteros Print
The Cure for Burnout provides a holistic method for burnout management to address the epidemic of our always-on, chronically overextended culture, empowering us to reclaim control of our own lives once and for all.

The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile up and Create Big Problems – and What to do About it by Robert Cross Print
Drawing on fresh research, Rob Cross and Karen Dillon will teach you how to recognize and manage the most common forms of microstress, and even remove some from your life. Compelling interviews with high achievers who’ve endured their share of microstress bring to life best practices that show you how to build resilience against microstress, and ultimately how to find purpose in your everyday life, using it as an antidote to your own microstress.

Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters by Laura Vanderkam Print
To make time for what matters, you need a resilient schedule, not a perfect schedule. Based on a time diary study of over 150 people, Vanderkam shares nine strategies for building opportunities for joy, nourishment, and fulfillment into your week.

Taking Care of Yourself from Harvard Business Review Press Print
When in your day did you take time for yourself? Too many working parents focus solely on those around them, completely losing sight of what they need themselves. But neglecting your own needs and wants can prevent you from being healthy, productive, and happy. Taking Care of Yourself provides expert advice to help you identify what you value most out of your work and home life, make choices that align with those values, and manage the emotions that come with them.

Health

Wa – The Art of Balance: Live Healthier, Happier and Longer the Japanese Way by Kaki Okumura Print
Wa means harmony, a central tenet at the heart of the Japanese belief that to live well is to live in balance. In this book, wellness expert Kaki Okumura shares the practices and psychology behind Wa and the Japanese health secrets that allow anyone, at any point in their life, to improve and sustain their health.

Real Self-Care: a Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness (Crystals, Cleanses and Bubble Baths Not Included) by Pooja Lakshmin Print
Board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Pooja Lakshmin finds this cultural embrace of self-care incomplete at best and manipulative at worst. Real self-care, in contrast, is an internal, self-reflective process that involves making difficult decisions in line with our values, and when we practice it, we shift our relationships, our workplaces, and even our broken systems. In Real Self-Care, Lakshmin helps readers understand what a real practice of caring for yourself could–and does–look like. Using case studies from her practice, clinical research, and the down-to-earth style that she’s become known for, Lakshmin provides a step-by-step program for real and sustainable change and solace.

Career

The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger Than Your Business Card by Christina Wallace Print
In The Portfolio Life, Harvard professor, serial entrepreneur, and self-described “human Venn diagram” Christina Wallace delivers a model for thriving amidst the constant disruptions of the 21st century. Adapting tried-and-true practices from the business sector, Christina makes Portfolio Living accessible and actionable for all readers through tools like her Balanced Scorecard, 100 Wishes Assessment, time optimization benchmarks, and more.

The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work by Simone Stolzoff Print
Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Michelin star chefs, Wall Street bankers, overwhelmed teachers and other laborers across the American economy, a designer and journalist reveals we are obsessed with our work and makes the urgent case for us to emotionally extricate ourselves from our jobs to reclaim our lives.

The Elevation Approach: Harness the Power of Work-Life Harmony to Unlock Your Creativity, Cultivate Joy, and Reach Your Biggest Goals by Tina Wells Print
The result of her deep thinking and some trial and error, The Elevation Approach presents Tina’s four-phase plan, a flexible and foolproof technique that helps you meet your goals without sacrificing joy for productivity and progress. Rather than treating work and life as separate and necessarily opposing forces, The Elevation Approach integrates your personal and professional ambitions, values, and responsibilities at every turn.

Finances

Money and Love: an Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions by Myra Strober Print
Labor economist and Stanford Professor Emerita Myra Strober and social innovation leader Abby Davisson know that in our daily lives money and love are interdependent. Whereas most decision-making guides focus only on one or the other, Money and Love shows us and our loved ones how to consider them jointly using the original, step-by-step 5Cs method: Clarify, Communicate, Choices, Check-in, and Consequences.

MoneyZen: the Secret to Finding Your “Enough” by Manisha Thakor Print
Thakor shares stories from her experiences and lessons she’s learned, offering a touchstone for what she calls true “wellth”–the convergence of financial and emotional health.

Tightwads and Spendthrifts: Navigating the Money Minefield in Real Relationships by Scott Rick Print
Scott Rick, a behavioral scientist at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, knows t the financial aspects of an intimate relationship can become a money minefield if couples try to navigate it without first discussing all of the financial issues between them, especially if those two people have different approaches to spending. Tightwads and Spendthrifts is a science-based guide to understanding and transforming how we manage money, both on our own and in relationships

Relationships

Work, Parent, Thrive: 12 Science-Backed Strategies to Ditch Guilt, Manage Overwhelm, and Grow Connection by Yael Schonbrun Print
Differing values and commitments pull working parents in opposite directions and the social supports families desperately need are lacking. Yet even with these very real challenges, we can find more peace and less stress. Some of these strategies include: Getting clear on our values and using these to help us make what often feel like no-win choices around time and resources; Practicing mindfulness in both parenting and working; Subtracting less meaningful obligations from our lives.

Power Moms: How Executive Mothers Navigate Work and Life by Joann Lublin Print
Wall Street Journal reporter, author of Earning It, and Power Mom Joann Lublin reveals how boomer and millennial women navigate the emotional and professional challenges of careers and families through the generations.

The Origins of You: How Breaking Family Patterns Can Liberate the Way We Live and Love by Vienna Pharaon Print
From licensed therapist and popular Instagram relationship expert Vienna Pharaon comes a profound guide to understanding and overcoming wounds from your Family of Origin-the foundation of how we relate to others, ourselves, and the world around us