The Balance of Living Well: 6 Ways to Achieve Total Harmony in Your Life.

Diana Coholic is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at
Laurentian University.

The Balance of Living Well aims at assist people to balance their lives according to six dimensions: fitness, food, family, friends, fashion, and finance. Each chapter begins with an overview followed by checklists and/or questions to help one assess their current life situation according to these topics. There are also some healthy recipes included. I tried several of these and found them to be excellent.

However, I am not entirely sure for whom the book would be helpful. I suspect that a reader that already has resources (personal, financial, and social) and a good sense of self-esteem might benefit from the material. For example, if one is dealing with difficult family dynamics or other serious life problems, this book is not going to be of much help in understanding and/or addressing these situations as the coverage of the topics is rather superficial. The author is clearly an accomplished woman, and therefore, her personal examples may be difficult to relate to for many readers.

In order to validate my thoughts about the book, I loaned it to a long-term client for her assessment. She agreed with me that it was difficult to relate to the material and she did not find it useful. There are some useful tidbits of information throughout, but overall the material does not promote a deep understanding of the issues presented.