Sanity Savers: Tips for Women to Live a Balanced Life
by Dale Atkins
Avon Trade, 2007
List Price: $12.95
Amazon Price: $10.36
Review by Kathleen Daelemans

All of my book reviews are biased in that I only review books I've read and like and feel compelled to tell the whole wide world about. I'm never one to keep a secret and I love to share unless it's good dark chocolate we're talking about in which case go get your own. But we're not. We're talking about a book. A book written by an incredibly accomplished woman who navigates the same wobbly wonderful world we all live in. She does it with grace and poise and a sense of humor. She does it one day at a time, one situation at a time and apparently with a pen tied to her wrist. Because she's written down every single graceful tactic, anecdote, mantra and list of result orientated tools and behaviors she's learned along the way. And she's sharing them with us in her new book, Sanity Savers: Tips for Women to Live a Balanced Life by Dr. Dale Atkins.

You don't have to pay Dr. Atkins' worth-every-single-penny hourly fee to benefit from her life saving Sanity Saving tips because she has come up with a pocket guide for handling any kind of stress the minute it strikes. Her new book, Sanity Savers: Tips for Women to Live a Balanced Life is the kind of book you need several copies of. One for your purse. One for your car. One for all your sisters and girlfriends. One for your nightstand and one to keep in your pantry near the chocolates.

No matter what you're clinging to the ceiling fan or gin bottle for—a two year old discovering their inner Picasso on your kitchen walls, a spouse who's never home, a mother-in-law who means well, an obese stack of bills, a waistline racing to outgrow your fat pants or the unrealistic expectations you set for yourself—Sanity Savers: Tips for Women to Live a Balanced Life has sanity saving tips to get you back on track before you can even think about composing another outburst or shedding another tear.

Sanity Savers: Tips for Women to Live a Balanced Life focuses on living a balanced life, parenting, aging well, managing stress, life & work transitions, family connections and healthy relationships. Dr. Atkins is a regular on the talk show circuit including NBC's Today, CNN, Nancy Grace, Court TV, and more, and she's been contributing to kathleendaelemans.com since I met her in the green room at the Today show and begged her to lend her voice, her wisdom and her Sanity Saving tips and tools with all of us. Each and every one of us has the opportunity to live more balanced lives for her presence here on the site and in the library of books she's written. Don't waste the generosity of her spirit and don't waste another minute of your very precious life.

Managing Busy When Busy is Managing You
A sneak peek inside Dr. Dale's new Sanity Savers book!

When you have a really busy week with lots of things planned, even if they are fun things, you may get stressed just because there is a lot going on. Even though you are aware of your stress you cannot sit still and relax. Basically you are always doing something because if you aren't doing something, you feel as if you are wasting time. It is kind of a "Catch 22."

Keeping your sanity while keeping yourself in check takes practice and a change of attitude about what "busy" means.

Revisit and Rethink What Busy Means – Does busy mean worthwhile? If you are not busy does it mean you are lazy, not contributing, not making a difference? Only you can change your perception of what busy means. Everyone, even the busiest of people, needs to kick back, relax, and renew in order to restore their life's balance.

Plan Fewer Things – Just do things as you feel like doing them or don't do anything at all.

If the Spirit Moves You – Participate in activities because you want to and not because you have a list of things to do in your calendar.

Allow "Holes" in Your Calendar – Deal with any anxious feeling from empty time in your schedule by breathing deeply. Tell yourself those are your health pockets of time to restore. You feel stressed when your calendar is full. Try to de-stress as you attempt to empty it a bit.

Dr. Atkins is the author and/or co-editor of several books including Sisters, From the Heart: Men and Women Write Their Private Thoughts about their Private Lives, Families and their Hearing-Impaired Children, I'm OK, You're My Parents: How to Overcome Guilt, Let Go of Anger and Create a Relationship that Works and Wedding Sanity Savers: How to Handle the Stickiest Dilemmas, Scrapes and Questions that Arise on the Road to Your Perfect Day.