Jim Ballard

Of 78 million Baby Boomers, one turns 50 every seven seconds. 70% of people over 75 still own their own home. Taken together, these facts spell perplexity for millions of adult children. Increasing numbers of Boomers, themselves aging, with over busy work lives and college-age children, must interrupt their schedules to move their aging parents out of households they can no longer manage. For most, the solution might seem simple: put Mom in a home, her stuff in a dumpster, and get back to the treadmill. Relocating Your Aging Parents, a book that helps readers slow down and reconsider this situation, not as a grim crisis but as a rare opportunity. It's the story of Sandy, whose 50-yard dash of a life is further complicated by the realization that her parents can't remain in the home in which she and her brothers grew up. Her father's resistance, her mother's growth in self-assertion, and her brother's transformation from resentment to active participation in the move highlight the triumphs and breakdowns along the way to the final, healing move. The heart-changing secrets to be learned from such an experience, balanced with the shortcuts and facilitative strategies that make it "no ordinary move", are provided by a character called Moving Mentor, a sort of Yoda of Moving. Her working with the family to manage the mutual influence of inter-generational values, together with excerpts from her website and journal, show readers a way to make participation in their parents' move a turning-point, a chance to renew and reunite. The second part of the book, For Adult Children Only; 101 Ways to Get Your Parents Moving, features lists of hands-on tasks, each with its rationale, arranged under the eight stages of a healthy move.


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"How is it they can get a killer whale to urinate on cue, and we can't get our son to pee into the toilet?" Amy Sheldrake, young mother and killer whale trainer-in-training, marvels at the complex behaviors her superiors at SeaWorld are able to coax out of these enormous beasts, while she and her husband struggle to make their beloved--and much smaller--son Josh obey the simplest rules. Using the story approach popularized by Ken Blanchard in his many bestsellers, this unique parenting book draws on the experiences of two of the coauthors--as both pioneering marine mammal trainers and as parents--to show how the same principles that induce killer whales to leap into the air can persuade young children to go quietly to bed.

Like Amy and her husband Matt, once you get the hang of the three Whale Done principles, you'll see a dramatic difference in overcoming challenges like following bedtime routines, dealing with tantrums, introducing new foods, sharing, avoiding overuse of the word no, learning to care for a pet, and instituting time-outs.

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A beautifully simple guide for finding peace--and a better pace--in every step of life.

These days, the world seems to be moving faster and faster, while we rush through our days at home and at work just to keep up. We live at a quicker pace than ever before, but we find ourselves stuck in thinking at the same speed--making both our thoughts and actions unfocused and frantic. Now, in What's the Rush?, business consultant Jim Ballard shows us how to step out of the race and stop setting unrealistic "finish lines" for ourselves--and finally find the pace at which we were meant to live and work.

As Jim Ballard reveals in this book, rushing blindly isn't the solution to negotiating the rocky terrain of our work and personal lives. Using the metaphor of running consciously, Ballard offers us a way to restore balance through the technique of "dreamrunning," which allows us to trust our own intuition to guide us, freeing us to reason and act from an inner source rather than merely react to outer stimuli. As Ballard writes, "The present moment is where we have power and awareness. It is where everything is happening. The more we live in it, the more we see that time is a resource, not a taskmaster."

Showing us how to balance logic with intuition, control with surrender, and thinking with feeling, Jim Ballard puts us on the path toward a life-changing experience. For all of us who feel that there simply are not enough hours in the day, or that life is passing us by while we stand around, helpless to stop it, What's the Rush? reveals the sheer joy of running free.

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