LEAP! How to Think Like a Dolphin & Do the Next Right, Smart Thing Come Hell or High Water

By Dudley Lynch

THE NEW "NEXT LEVEL" PSYCHOLOGY THAT PROPELS YOU TO WHERE THE ANSWERS ARE, COME HELL OR HIGH WATER!

Prize what's right. Dump what's dumb. Find what works. Then, make it happen by reordering your reality at a new level of simplicity, effectiveness and satisfaction.

In a nutshell, those are precisely the kind of spot-on observations and outcomes made possible by the thinking qualities illuminated in this trailblazing book.

Veteran change and strategy expert Dudley Lynch says these skills can become available to any of us when we activate the unique thinking characteristics of what he calls "the dolphin mind." In contrast to the increasingly antiquated and overwhelmed carp, shark and not-quite-flying-fish varieties of mind, the dolphin mind isn't swamped by the rapid-change demands of the 21st Century. Instead, it is constantly searching for ways to make the leap to the next right, smart, good thing or move.

In this galvanizing work with universal appeal, Mr. Lynch demonstrates one more time why he is considered by many to be the most insightful, eloquent and inspiring guide to the work of the late Clare W. Graves, psychology's most original “interdisciplinary” explorer of how the mind grows. And why he is uniquely equipped to offer dependable counsel on how to respond to the unprecedented demands of our change-fraught new century.

“Next level” powers and abilities that he seeks for every reader include:

--The super-glues of self-healing, raised to a whole new effectiveness.
--The confidence to confront. And then, where possible, to include.
--An automatic aversion to incompetence. (And a game plan for dealing with it.)
--Wonderment, then exploration, then activation. Because it's your nature.
--The judgment of the merciful & the passion of the justice seeker. And the wisdom to know the difference.
--Awareness, so you can always find your way forward.
--Resilience, so you can always find your way back.

And, of course, the ability to make the leap to what's next, what's possible, what makes sense and what works any time and every time the world confronts you with the need to do something different.

In 9 highly instructional chapters and 8 inspirational profiles, LEAP! gets you ready for the launch, come hell or high water, feeding frenzies, the jarring arrival of the unknown, tough times or other life-changing events. You can count on the tangible payoffs you are looking for, whether you need to search for a new job or career, discover new meaning for your life or just get to work updating and reinvigorating your favorite part of the planet by becoming the solution when there doesn't appear to be one anywhere in view.

LEAP! is a sequel to the author's international best-selling work, Strategy of the Dolphin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dudley Lynch
• Release date: Apr 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9780945822080

Book preview

I met Dudley for the first time virtually via a game-changing book he wrote in 1988 (with co-author Paul Kordis), Strategy of the Dolphin. I was introduced to that particular work by a colleague and friend who was to my knowledge the first true Dolphin I’d ever met, a Dane by the name of Finn Strandgaard.

Finn exemplified all the things Dudley and Paul wrote about in Strategy of the Dolphin. He was foremost a seeker with what seemed to me to be unlimited curiosity about everything. His personal library spanned rooms full of floor to ceiling shelving stocked end to end with books on every conceivable topic imaginable . . . yet he was free of most of the prejudices I associate with well read folks. What stands out in my mind most of all about Finn was his ability to flow with the situation. Whether it was about people, places, information, activities or things, Finn was open to whatever showed up in the moment, and he was eager to engage, unless he wasn’t. His natural curiosity led him to begin and leave behind professions and businesses as the next new thing on the horizon caught his fancy, and in virtually every one he was a success of sorts.

While all of this may sound unusual when you compare it to the hard-nosed, hard-boiled image of a modern entrepreneur or executive I think it’s right on the money with regard to where Dudley and Paul were pointing when they wrote Strategy of the Dolphin . . . unleashing a *NEW* man for a *NEW* world, literally.

From the time I’d read Strategy of the Dolphin, I became intrigued and entranced with Dudley’s work and pursued connecting with him through his company, Brain Technologies. I became an associate and began using his BrainMap®, Asset Report® and other assessment instruments for myself and with my clients internationally with great success. I continue to be a user and great fan of these materials for helping clients see and achieve their potential.

During my evolving relationship with Dudley I realized I’d have to become more familiar with the work of Dr. Clare W. Graves, and I began studying all the material I could get my hands on feverishly. As I started to realize the importance of Dr. Graves' model and the impact it could have with my clients, individually and organizationally, introducing it to my clients and colleagues became more common and consistent to how I approached the transformational performance consulting work I do.

Then in 2003 Dudley wrote another blockbuster book, The Mother of All Minds, a seminal work about the evolution of the Graves Model about leaping free of an outdated human nature as he put it . . . literally the birth of the *NEW* man (or woman as the case may be). When I read it the first time it bowled me over. I now recommend this book to everyone who I believe has a glimmer of interest in their personal evolution and insist that anyone who wants to work with me owns a copy themselves and reads it.

Around the time I was reading The Mother of All Minds, I decided that meeting Dudley after all the years of being influenced by him from afar was at hand. We finally got to do that, along with his wonderful wife and family, at his home over a couple of days I spent with them there. In addition to be treated graciously by all, I was privy to hours of intense dialogue around Dudley’s expertise in human nature and interaction.

During our time together in his home I became even more aware of the depth of Dudley’s working knowledge of the Graves Model. In this regard, as far as I’m concerned, he stands head and shoulders above the other Graves gurus out there. I make this claim for one reason most significantly, i.e.: he is operating at a completely different level than the other folks whose books I’ve read and presentations I’ve seen. Dudley stands firmly on what he refers to as Dolphin ground, or what the good Dr. Graves referred to as Level Seven in his human values model, and this alone makes all the difference as you’ll read about in this book you now have in your hands, LEAP!

In LEAP!, Dudley has taken what he laid out so elegantly in The Mother of All Minds and makes it even more accessible, especially to those readers with absolutely no background in the concepts he’s presenting. Rather than a tome of theory, LEAP! is a practical user’s guide to the most important aspects of the Graves Model in your day-to-day life and the world of business. He covers the most common levels of the Graves Model you’re likely to find in the modern world with an emphasis on the power of the Dolphin position. With this working knowledge available to you, it’s unlikely that you’ll find yourself without resources when you need them most. Instead you’re more likely to have the insights and flexibility to act when action is most necessary and effective.

Among the most powerful features of this book are the vignettes pulling back the curtain on other Dolphin thinkers, how they came to be that way and the benefit in their lives as a result. Another power feature is the way that Dudley offers specific descriptions and recipes for recognizing and dealing with other players in the Graves Model spectrum . . . Carps, Sharks and Not-Quite-Flying-Fish (NoQuiffs in LEAP! language). This material alone is worth ten times the cost of the book and the time it takes to read it!

As always with Dudley, the material in LEAP! is meticulously researched and noted. While I will continue to recommend Strategy of the Dolphin and The Mother of All Minds to all of my own family, friends and clients around the world, LEAP! is now my go-to definitive source for people who ask me how they can update their thinking and dramatically improve the quality of their lives.

Too much to claim about a book? Don’t take my word alone for it, read it for yourself and then decide.

—Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, New Jersey

May, 2012

ONE

THE ONE & ONLY OPTION

Thriving = Surviving

Making the leap requires that you do something different enough that it changes the outcome of events or the very nature of the game or, in those rarest of moments, the actual Zeitgeist you are operating from. Even when faced with circumstances suggesting that new endings in the script could be useful, you don’t always have to make the leap, of course. You may go on largely as before, and even so, the world doesn't come crashing down calamitously on your head. Think of such experiences, willful or otherwise, as getting it with a feather.

Generally at such times, the risks from not responding to the need to change are small: a little delay or frustration or embarrassment, perhaps accompanied by a minor loss or penalty. Like when the fuel gauge in your car has been pushing into the red and, for whatever reason, you keep ignoring it. Obviously, you are at risk of running out of gas, but if that happens, you’ll simply call your brother-in-law or AAA’s 24-hour service number and sheepishly beg for the delivery of enough petrol to get you to a gas pump. Such instances are more likely to be an inconvenience than a calamity.

There are times, however, when the consequences of ignoring the need to leap can pack a greater wallop. More will be at stake than merely being razzed by your brother-in-law or missing or being late to an appointment.

Let’s say that you have intended for months to move your retirement savings out of your employer’s common stock into safer index funds. You were still intending to do so this morning when you heard the breaking news bulletin on CNBC TV. The one announcing that your employer had just declared bankruptcy. Hearing the news froze you in your tracks. Sent your heart racing. Left you gobsmacked. Getting it with a fist instead of a feather can do that. Because this time, there is a real price to be paid for being dilatory.

And there can be even higher costs from ignoring the need to leap. Much higher, in fact. This time, the message that it’s too late to do something different gets delivered with a hammer rather than a fist or a feather.

It has happened a lot lately to more than a few national economies and their financial institutions. To certain dictators who thought the time would never come when their iron-fisted, authoritarian antics failed to keep the people they had enslaved or otherwise manipulated and maligned under control. To all kinds of organizations or entire societies that chose to stay with a faulty game plan long past its prime. Or kept believing in willfully blind ideologies or inadequate self-policing practices. Or continued to follow charismatic but inept or dishonest leaders. It can happen to anyone who grows careless or too full of themselves and refuses to pay attention to what is changing right up to the time when the hammer appears seemingly out of nowhere, and they get ball-peened between the eyes.

Can the penalties for poor leap management get any more severe than this? They can, and they do.

Keep ignoring pressures to leap, and you should not be surprised (but almost assuredly will be) to find yourself ensnared in the kind of scene that only a Hollywood disaster movie director could love.

This time, your coping skills are likely to be stretched to their limits and possibly beyond. The unknown may start to arrive in relentless volleys. You may extinguish one fire only to see multiple others flare ghoulishly in your face. You can expect to experience a fierce desire to flee the chaos entirely only to realize that you are clueless as to where the exits are.

Think of getting it with a Mack truck.

Anyone who has dilly-dallied over warnings to flee rising floodwaters, a raging brush or forest fire, a rampaging enemy army or a proverbial sinking ship and gotten trapped in the ensuing maelstrom can describe what it feels like to get it with a Mack truck. If, that is, they survive the ordeal and are alive to try to pick up the pieces and reassemble them in some kind of recognizable pattern.

Why Do We Have This Feeling

That We Are Living in

‘Bubble, Bubble, Toil and

Trouble’ Times?

And then there is that truly epic kind of switchover time, both for individuals or the collective. The finality of a terminal illness. The sudden loss of a spouse or child. Or misfortune so oppressive that suicide may seem like the only reasonable out—that there cannot possibly be any tomorrow or recovery.

On a larger scale, such times may involve the total ruin of a whole ecology or economy. Or the collapse of an entire civilization or way of life and even a real-time existential risk to our species. Whether one person is involved or a planet-full, the time for getting it with a feather, a fist, a hammer or a Mack truck has expired. This time, you must face the very real possibility that these could be end times for you and all you value and care about, the kind of time when, according to poets, the center does not hold and everything comes apart.

That’s what it means to get it with a locomotive.(1)

In less pressure-packed eras, such as the increasingly idolized late Twentieth Century, failure-to-leap misfortunes were more equably spread, at least in terms of their severity. Most of us had our share of getting it with a feather experiences but we had far fewer confrontations with the fist. We experienced even fewer hammer incidents and only the occasional Mack truck episode. Locomotive-rated ordeals were, thankfully, great rarities.

How swiftly all that changed!

For ever greater numbers of residents on the third rock from the sun, the intensity of the leap experience seems to be trending more and more toward the high end of the scale. Given what people and their systems and institutions are being asked to cope with, it doesn’t seem hyperbolic to suggest that the Mack truck- and locomotive-rated tests of coping power are threatening to emerge as the new normal.

In America, it can be argued (and some observers have) that the spiral of intensification originated precisely between 8:46 a.m. and 10:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001. Who could have imagined; who can forget? In the hours and days to come, over and over, a TV-riveted nation and world collectively experienced what felt like a getting it with locomotive experience to eclipse all locomotive experiences. In the shortest time, the planet zeitgeist aped Humpty Dumpty, and the brand new Twenty-First Century reeled. And reeled. And has continued to reel.

The Last Thing I Want

Is for My Readers to Lose

Their Mojo for

Making the Leap

Tracked from those ultra-perturbational moments just after the turn of the millennium, so many of our lives have been jolted by a disproportionate number of high-impact, leap-requiring exigencies. It is enough to confirm this new century as an epic change-over time. In the United States, for example, millions of jobs have disappeared, many of them very good ones that won’t be returning. People have lost cars, homes, incomes, dignity—hope. The very Earth itself is presenting itself as disgruntled—natural events that seem to be getting bigger, more frequent, more damaging, more deadly.

One of the casualties of all this is long-range forecasting. It seems folly to try to suggest what the next big leap needs are going to be. Since getting out of bed these days sometimes seems folly enough, your author is going to forgo the temptation of trying to be a Prognosticator in Chief. It seems to be a much better idea to maintain the highest possible state of leap readiness, come what may.

This is why from the outset of this work, I am avoiding the considerable temptation to make this another enthusiastic peak performance paean to positive thinking. (Not that another one is needed; there seems to be a new bestselling Napoleon Hill born, if not every minute, at least in every book-buying cycle.) Instead, the focus is going to be on peak survival skills. For any of my readers who may have lost their edge, their moxie, their potency, their carbonation—their mojo!—for making the leap or sensed a dip in its vigor, my goal is to help them recapture and restore it. In these Mack truck/locomotive-leaning times, with the never-ending need to do something different, nothing seems to have greater value for doing so than cultivating successful leaping abilities. These have turned out to be the most essential of all skills when what you have been doing is no longer adequate for tending to the tasks at hand or the unknowns importuning at your door.

HOW MANY WAYS CAN WE SPELL ‘UNCERTAINTY’?

The key word is uncertainty. (As I penned these words, Google was returning 65,300,000 hits for uncertainty, which was about two and a half billion less than for sex but about ten million more than for jogging, about twenty five million more than for Donald Trump and about sixty three million more than for chili con carne. And this was a fifty percent increase for uncertainty from just six months before.)

The thing about this uncertainty is that we can expect it to hang around. More than that, to proliferate. Swamp everything, and everyone. Overrun nearly every system and nearly every feature and facet of our lives and work. To, literally, explode over us, through us and around us.

As Joshua Cooper Ramo writes in The Age of the Unthinkable:

This change is irresistible. It is infectious. It will spread to every corner of our lives, to our businesses, our bank accounts, our hopes, and our health. What we face isn’t one single shift or revolution, like the end of World War II or the collapse of the Soviet Union or a financial crisis, so much as an avalanche of ceaseless change. It is change that will render institutions that look unshakable weak and unstable; it will elevate movements that look weak into positions of great power. As much as we might wish it, our world is not becoming more stable or easier to comprehend. We are entering, in short, a revolutionary age. And we are doing so with ideas, leaders, and institutions that are better suited for a world now several centuries behind us. [This] revolution is creating unprecedented disruption and dislocation.(2)

Because of the incoming leviathan of uncertainty and the unknown, the times