About the Author

After years in senior communication roles crafting content for executives, Jae collapsed from stress-related adrenal fatigue. This life-altering experience propelled her to research human behavior, neuroscience, mindfulness, and organizational relationship systems.

In 2008, Jae founded Simple Intentions and developed the Mindful Life™ Program, which includes four group coaching workshops to generate reflection, awareness and action at the organizational and individual levels. Jae has taught the skill of awareness to thousands of employees at multinational corporations in more than 50 countries including China, Russia, India, Japan, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Germany, United Kingdom, Norway, and the United States.

Jae contributes to the Awareness at Work column for Mindful Magazine, the Healthy Living section on Huffington Post as well as the Simple Intentions blog. Jae has a master’s degree in Communication Management from Colorado State University and a bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Communication from Metropolitan State College of Denver. She holds certificates in co-active coaching and organizational relationship systems coaching and is the author of seven books.

About the Book

Work-life balance has nothing to do with work. Really. It also doesn’t matter what words you use to describe it. The fact is, most people share a similar desire to create easy joy and meaningful engagement across the roles, relationships and responsibilities that make up life.

Our current habits and perceptions often get us stuck and prevent us from creating the life we desire. Get unstuck, learn the truths about work-life balance.

Book Review

When you think of a book that needs studying, I’m willing to bet that the first image that comes to mind is that of a thick book with lots of words and maybe even some tables and graphs.  In my case, said book is covered in colour-coded sticky notes with sections highlighted in different colours and a stack of notecards on the side.

But that’s just me.

Interesting enough, The Five Truths About Work-Life Balance is a book that requires a lot of study as well despite it being devoid of either a ton of pages (total page count: 99) or a wealth of words on each.  Rather, it reads as a guide for a reflection of sorts on how to create work-life balance.  Each page contains a self-explanatory statement.  Initially I was a little taken aback—I wanted Ellard to tell me more about each statement, to take me through it all and help me figure out this whole ‘balance’ thing.

Then I realised that my view of this book was affected (and quite heavily so) by the way we are often relegated in the position of passive recipient.  I realised then that the reason perhaps the pages of the book are devoid of superfluous words and only have a basic statement was to drive home the truth of the section in question.  So I read the book again but this time, did the work.  Each page became covered in notes as I pushed myself to reflect on each statement and to identify its application, actual or potential, in my life.

This is how I suggest reading this book: as a workbook.  The fact that the pages do not come with lines where we can jot down answered is liberating; some of my notes are supremely short and succinct (and are written in broad, bold letters) while others go on for so long that I covered the page in tiny, scratch-like writing.  Jot down your notes after really taking the time to think about what is written on it in the first place.

It feels like, after being encouraged to do more every day, we, as a North American society, are starting to realise that we are trying to live our life as a race to check off as many items on a giant, never-ending to-do list.  We are also taking a step back from living as passive recipients to everything and anything to take our rightful place as active protagonists in both our personal development and the development of the society around us.  Ellard’s The Five Truths About Work-Life Balance can come in quite handy as a companion to achieve this.

More information is available on the Simple Intentions’ website and Facebook page; reach out to the team on Twitter.

Thank you to iReads Book Tours for providing a
copy of this book for me to review!