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

by Dave Gray

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.

Kurt’s fundamental premise: 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.

the ways we experience that reality are inherently unique and subjective.

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.

Beliefs are constructed hierarchically, using theories and judgments, which are based on selected facts and personal, subjective experiences.

This shared world can seem as if it is just

“the way it is,” when in fact it is just one of many possible realities.

Your beliefs inform your actions, and your actions are interpreted by others, and those interpretations become the basis for their beliefs, which inform their actions.

co-create a shared world, so we can live, work, and do things together. Changing a shared world requires changing its underlying beliefs.

Liminal thinking is a way to identify limiting beliefs and open yourself to hitherto unseen possibilities that can open new doors.

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

Whatever groups you belong to or most strongly associate with, the dynamics will be similar. Collectively, we create a kind of bubble of belief that reinforces and protects our existing beliefs by denying that alternative beliefs are within the realm of possibility. It’s a kind of collective delusion or dream that we co-create in order to maintain a group map that we use to navigate the world.

People like stability. Once a group of people has formed a belief, they will tend to reinforce it in a way that creates blind spots to alternative beliefs.

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.

Liminal thinking requires a willingness to test and validate new ideas, even when they seem absurd, crazy, or wrong.

Beliefs are unconsciously defended by a bubble of self-sealing logic, which maintains them even when they are invalid, to protect

personal identity and self-worth.

David Rock of the NeuroLeadership Institute has developed a brain-science-based model for thinking about emotional needs, which he calls the SCARF model.1 SCARF is an acronym that stands for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness.

To the brain, at least, emotional needs are as real as physical ones.

Status: Does this person feel important, recognized, or needed by others? Certainty: Does this person feel confident that they know what’s ahead, and that they can predict the future with reasonable certainty? Autonomy: Does this person feel like they have control of their life, their work, and their destiny? Relatedness: Does this person feel like they belong? Do they feel a sense of relatedness? Do they trust the group to look after them? Fairness: Does this person feel like they are being treated fairly? Do they feel that the “rules of the game” give them a fair chance?

was carving out safe space, space for people to be vulnerable, space where people could safely reveal their anxieties, frustrations, and emotional, unmet needs.

If you don’t understand the underlying need, nothing else matters. People will not share their innermost needs unless they feel safe, respected, and accepted for who they are.

He called this trait falsifiability: the possibility that a theory could be proven false. Many theories people have about other people are like horoscopes. They are not falsifiable theories, but self-fulfilling prophecies that can never be disproven.

The parents had a belief: That the son was out of control, and the solution was to reassert control. In order to change the situation, they needed to change their belief that by asserting control they would help their son learn self-control. They needed to get outside the situation and look at how they were influencing it.

What happened there? She was disrupting a typical pattern not by attacking the problem, but by attacking her typical solution to the problem. The disruption of their typical pattern changed the dynamic completely.

Many beliefs are embedded in habitual routines that run on autopilot. Disrupt the routine to create new possibilities.

Every good story starts with a person in some kind of situation: a problem, a choice, or an opportunity. Then the story tells you what they did, and why, and then it tells you what happened because of that. Maybe a lesson was learned. If the story is good enough, it’s worth remembering and repeating to others.

The best way to promote a new or different belief is not with facts, but with a story.

Principle 5: Beliefs Defend Themselves

Principle 6: Beliefs Are Tied to Identity