I bought Rick Smith’s book “The Leap”  last week and finished reading it this weekend. Usually, I’m a very fast reader, but I wanted to take my time with this book and let the ideas he presents percolate within my mind and really allow his insights to take root.

I just started a new job within my company this week so I’m hoping to use some of Rick’s thoughts in “The Leap” in my new position.

The one thing that I have learned in my corporate life in Canada’s financial services industry is that it’s better that you make your own “Leap”, rather than it being made for you.

 As Rick says on page 6 of his book,

Above all else, remember this: the ruts we may feel stuck in are largely of our own making. What we have built we can also undo. What we can dream we can achieve.

The book is not your typical career changing book with “10 Steps to a Better Job”- type writings. It’s more thought-provoking that that.  

The Leap is divided into the following 8 Chapters and, along with real-life examples, provides journal-type questions at the end of the chapters that you can complete on your own to help you in finding your own “Leap”.

Chapter 1: “Great Work, You’re Fired”

What have you done for me lately?

Isn’t it true that you are only as good as what you’ve just done for the company. No one remembers what you did on your last project or how hard you worked last year. You can be working away for years at the same company, thinking that you are a star within the company and that they need you.

You’re moving up in  the company and making all the right career moves and WHAM! suddenly you are let go or made redundant. Perhaps new management has come in and they want their own team, or the company is bought by another company, or worse yet there’s a downturn in the economy and they think you’re over-priced.

What would you do?

In this chapter, Rick explains how his idea to form www.w50.com  was born, after being suddenly let go from his corporate position. Of course he had no idea of how successful his site and he would become, after all, just like many people, nothing in his life prepared him to become extraordinary. He wasn’t a risk taker, he saw a need and fulfilled it.

What Rick introduces in this chapter is that there is

a path that almost all of us can follow to substantially improve the stature and trajectory of our life.

Chapter 2: The Now Trap: Stuck in the Status Quo

Rick starts the second chapter with a portion of one of my favourite poems by Marianne Williamson (here’s the full poem );

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

In this chapter, Rick explains how as humans we imagine ourselves as risk takers and want to make all sorts of changes within our lives, but our biology is wired differently. Because we can’t fully fill in all of the pieces of our future lives, we tend to fill in these gaps with our present circumstances.

In effect, our present determines our future. We can overcome this though. As Rick explains,

So it is with jobs and careers and even life patterns. We often invest so heavily in them, and buy into the logic of our investment and decision making so thoroughly, that we see abandoning them at the one extreme as a kind of psychological suicide and at the other as an unnecessary dare, given that the future (as our flawed brains paint it) is so likely to re-create the present.

In this chapter, Rick explains the myths that hold us back and provides real-life examples of people overcoming those myths.

Chapter 3: Breaking Away: The Three Rules

I don’t want to give away everything in the book, but I will say that in this chapter, Rick outlines the 3 critical steps you need to follow in the “The Leap” process. He explains how to find your own specific Primary Color and how to tap the energy within yourself. Doing these two actions can lead you out of your career and/or life rut.

Chapter 4: Primary Colors: Tapping the Energy Within

Chapter 4 is concerned with explaining the framework around your Primary Color and how you use this information to focus on the areas where your strengths and passions overlap.

Finding your Primary Color is the way out of that bind. … Talent and passion feed off and strengthens one another. Performance swells. Satisfaction, quite simply, goes off the charts.

Chapter 5: What Is My Primary Color?

Check out Rick’s free assessment at http://www.primarycolorassessment.com/ to uncover your Primary Color and find your unique intensities in the three core competencies of Creativity, Management and Innovation.

With this knowledge, you can assess where you are today against your future life and career paths.

There’s a fair bit of information at this site, so read the resources, watch the video and complete the assessment. You can also read Rick’s blog .

Here are my results from the completing the assessment:

As you can see, my Primary Color is “Fallen Snow” and I have a good balance between Curiosity (91%), Execution (91%) and Leadership (90%).

Chapter 6: Big, Selfless, and Simple: How Ideas Become Contagious

I liked reading about Bob Geldof and the background to how Live Aid came about. It was, and still is, the largest concert in the history of the world.

In this chapter, Rick talks about,

Why is it that some ideas take flight and spread like wildfire, while others, seemingly equally unique or worthy, fall mostly on deaf ears?

The answer is that not all ideas are created equal. You need “Big, Selfless and Simple” ideas. This way, anyone can become extraordinary.

Of course, you have to have passion, too. But, you don’t have to be a risk taker, nor does being ordinary in the past exclude you from discovering your strengths and doing extraordinary things in the future.

Throughout the book, Rick provides great examples of ordinary people who were living their lives and all of it sudden, it seems, did one or two things that changed the trajectory of their lives. I say, seem, because of course there’s more to it than that.

Chapter 7: The Spark Sequence: Stacking the Deck

I really liked Chapter 7 because it touched on something that I’ve learned in my own life. The truth is, you don’t have to chuck your entire life away if something isn’t working.

You can educate yourself, take some small risks, gain new experiences, make minor leaps and forays into your ideal situation.

You can tweak as you go along and use trial and error to steer your life course. Of course, you do have to take action at some point. There’s no getting around that. But, you can mitigate those risks and overcome your fears.

As Rick explains,

Sparking lets us answer the questions that hold us back. Answering the questions enables us to believe. Once we believe, we can act. And – miracle of the whole process – once we act, so many of our fears and perceived risk fall right away…

Chapter 8:  Aristotle on a Lily Pad: A Perspective on Life-Work Design

In the closing chapter, Rick reiterates that The Leap is a personal evolution and reviews the steps in making the leap work for you in your current situation.

What you could be doing is focusing on life-changing opportunities that offer a significant increase in your happiness combined with a high probability of success.

The Leap is a book that offers real-life examples of people who have made changes in their live for the better. It’s an inspiring read and more than that it offers questions and a framework to help you uncover your Primary Color and use that knowledge to get more out of your life.

I have bought the book, read it, and can recommend it.

If you’ve read The Leap tell me what you think about it by leaving a comment below.

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