Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

by Dave Gray

These six principles constitute a theory of beliefs: how they come into being, why they are necessary, how they are reinforced over time, and why people cling to their beliefs, even when they are incomplete, obsolete, or invalid. They are beliefs about beliefs.

What I learned from Kurt is that beliefs are often the main things standing in the way of change, not only for individuals, but also for teams, families, organizations, nations, and even the world as a whole.

We construct our beliefs, mostly unconsciously, and thereafter they hold us captive. They can help us focus and make us more effective, but sadly, they also can limit us: they blind us to possibility and subject us to fog, fear, and doubt.

Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment. —Marshall McLuhan

Boundaries give life structure, which makes us comfortable. But they can also be shifted, rethought, reframed, and reorganized.

Liminal thinking is the art of creating change by understanding, shaping, and reframing beliefs.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. —John Lennon

We all can grasp some fragments of reality, but none of us have a grasp on reality as a whole.

Buddha said his teachings were like a finger pointing at the moon. The finger is helpful if you want to see the moon, but you should not mistake the finger for the moon.

These four things—your experiences, attention, theories, and judgments—form a foundation that reduces the unknowable to a kind of map or model that is simple enough to understand and use in daily life.

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. —Henry David Thoreau

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. —Philip K. Dick

This has to do with the way people evaluate new information. There are two ways that people make sense of new ideas: • First, is it internally coherent? Does it make sense, given what I already know, and can it be integrated with all of my other beliefs? In other words, does it make sense from within my bubble? • Second, is it externally valid? Can I test it? If I try it, does it work? This is an excellent way to test a new idea, but one big problem, which causes blind spots and reinforces those self-sealing bubbles, is that people rarely test ideas for external validity when they don’t have internal coherence.

The Johari window is a framework developed by two psychologists named Joe and Harry (really!)1 as an aid for understanding the self. It’s a great tool for liminal thinking. You can imagine it as a building with four rooms.

There’s an old story about a professor who went to visit a master to learn about Zen. The master poured tea into the professor’s cup until it was full, and then kept pouring. The professor watched until he could not restrain himself. “The cup is full!” he said. “No more will go in!” “Like this cup,” said the master, “your head is full of ideas and opinions. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

The test of a good theory, he said, is not that it can’t be disproven, but that it can be disproven.

He called this trait falsifiability: the possibility that a theory could be proven false.

When people hear a stressful, dramatic, high point of a story, their brain releases cortisol, the same hormone that creates the fight-or-flight response and creates strong memories of emotional experiences. And when conflicts or difficulties are resolved, the brain releases oxytocin, the hormone released by physical touch, which creates social bonds and feelings of contentment, calm, and security.

If you give people facts without a story, they will explain it within their existing belief system. The best way to promote a new or different belief is not with facts, but with a story.

If you can change your mind, you can change your life. —William James

The novelist Robert Anton Wilson once wrote “All experience is a muddle, until we make a model.”