Intangibles: Big-League Stories and Strategies for Winning the Mental Game?in Baseball and in Life

Hazel Carter's home-help tidies the house, does the washing and helps with the cooking, and the only payment she requires is a nice big bowl of dog food at dinner time ...

When Hazel was debilitated with crippling back problems, she found herself unable to look after the house so she used her skills as an animal behaviourist to teach Connie, her seven-month-old Newfoundland, how to do the work instead. Connie picks out items of dirty clothing from the laundry basket and places them inside the washing machine. When the washing cycle is over, Connie transfers the clean clothes to the tumble dryer. Hazel could leave Connie to complete the entire task unsupervised - if only Connie understood that dark colours must not be washed with whites. Connie also works in the garden, brings in the shopping and is happy to do anything from carefully carrying a basket of eggs to pulling Hazel along in a boat. 'At one stage all I could do was lie in bed and Connie would bring me a toy from her toy box for me to throw as I lay there. She quickly learnt that to have a game she must first bring her toy to me, a very valuable lesson. My idea was to keep her occupied and mentally stimulated while helping me at the same time.'

Underlying the story of this remarkable dog is a remarkable relationship with a remarkable woman: Hazel Carter. For almost thirty years she has been helping owners to understand and cure their dogs' behavioural problems with patience, gentleness and kindness.

The Information Age? Think again.

Change is everywhere: how we communicate, what we do for a living, the values we hold, the way we raise our children, even the way we access information. Thanks to a global economy, the force of the Internet, and the explosion of mobile technology, we have—almost imperceptibly—been ushered into a new era, the Shift Age, in which change happens so quickly that it's become the norm.

Man-made developments—such as tools, machines, and technology—defined previous ages, but the Shift Age will be defined by our own power of choice. In Entering the Shift Age, leading futurist David Houle argues that we are going through a major collapse of legacy thinking, eroding many of the thought structures that have defined the last two hundred years of humanity. Houle identifies and explains the new forces that will shape our lives—including remote workplaces, the cloud, "24/7" culture, speed-of-light connectivity, creativity, and the influence of Millenials and Digital Natives—for the next twenty years.

In this eye-opening book, Houle navigates this pivotal point in human history with clarity and anticipation, focusing on the power of human consciousness and the direct influence we can impart on everything from healthcare to media to education. According to Houle, we are more independent than ever before. We are in control.

There's no "going back" to the way things were. Reality is changing ever faster, and ENTERING THE SHIFT AGE is your guide to keeping up.