Comfortable Chaos: Forget "Balance" and Make Career and Family Choices That Work for You [Paperback]

Carolyn S. Harvey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2005

What happened to the pace of life? Whether you are juggling work and family life, or staying home full time, life today can feel like a race.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Comfortable Chaos is the first book that accepts the pace of modern living and helps readers come to their own life balance. This book recognizes that life today will never be free of stress and that everyone has his or her own level of tolerance for chaos.

About the Author

Carolyn Harvey and Beth Herrild are corporate veterans, mothers, and speakers at the very popular Comfortable Chaos seminars they run together. They combine their knowledge of "life in the corporate trenches" with their own experiences balancing work and family, along with stories from the hundreds of people they have help at their Comfortable Chaos seminars.

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Self-Counsel Press, Inc.; 1 edition (March 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1551806045
• ISBN-13: 978-1551806044
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,607,057 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Want and Can (WaC) manage my Chaos!, June 6, 2005

By 

Judy Ogden (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Comfortable Chaos: Forget "Balance" and Make Career and Family Choices That Work for You (Paperback)

This book was a breath of fresh air for me! It outlines a very logical approach to understanding your "chaos coefficient" and learning to manage your life and time to stay within your comfort range. Stress is unavoidable but knowing what my tolerance levels are and gaining some tools to determine the root causes will prove invaluable to me.

This book is very engaging since it's filled with real life antic dotes and simple exercises. I plan to keep it on my shelf and pick it up occasionally when my life seems to be getting out of WaC (my Want and Can area) again!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Makes sense to me, May 26, 2005

By 

Elisibeth M. Luce - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Comfortable Chaos: Forget "Balance" and Make Career and Family Choices That Work for You (Paperback)

I always thought there was something wrong with me. Why couldn't I find the "balance" between work and family and having a life that would make me happy in all areas? This book put me straight. There's no such thing!

But you can do some things to help life work out better, starting by figuring out your tolerance for chaos and then managing the stuff in life that creates chaos. This book is entertaining and designed to be read in short bits. It's loaded with simple (not stupid) exercises, good advice and case histories of other people. Very helpful. Now I recognize "high chaos" people a mile off.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Liberation From Unattainable "Balance", April 29, 2005

By 

Mary J. Blackwood "The Aging with Pizzazz Lady" (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Comfortable Chaos: Forget "Balance" and Make Career and Family Choices That Work for You (Paperback)

When one part of our lives is disproportionate to the others, either assuming overwhelming importance or suffering from extreme neglect, we feel unhealthy, both physically and mentally. As a health educator, my entire life has been devoted to helping people achieve "balance." What my students have found, as have I, is that balance is a moving target and never achievable for any length of time. Comfortable Chaos is a concept whose time has come. Once we remove the burden of thinking we have to be balanced, we are liberated to better enjoy our life as it is- a bit chaotic, sometimes more than others. As Harvey and Herrild have expressed, we periodically can hit those pools of quiet water, but most of the time, we may be shooting rapids. The trick is to enjoy the ride. Realize that some chaos in our lives is inevitable and engineer them to strive for a tolerant level of chaos where we can focus on the experiences, the joys, and the stimulation of it all. Having a full life must, by definition, involve turmoil and stress. But stress makes us grow. Comfortable Chaos is a realistic helpful book with some excellent tools to apply to our own situation. I plan to recommend the book to my stress management and "Eating an Elephant' class participants.