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

by Dave Gray

“What is liminal thinking? Liminal is a word that means boundary, doorway, portal. Not this or that, not the old way or the new way, but neither and both. A state of ambiguity or disorientation that precedes a breakthrough to a new kind of thinking. The space between. Liminal thinking is a kind of psychological agility that enables you to successfully navigate these times of transition. It involves the ability to read your own beliefs and needs; the ability to read others’ beliefs and needs; and the habit of continually evaluating, validating, and changing beliefs in order to better meet needs.”

A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels. —Albert Einstein

The book was called Rapid Viz: A New Method for the Rapid Visualization of Ideas by Kurt Hanks. It was the

first time I had ever seen someone articulate the idea of drawing as thinking, which since then has become a central theme of my life and work.

One of the reasons he is so good at this is his bedside manner. He is a warm and caring person and one of the best listeners I know. He does not judge.

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.

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

Some roles are liminal in nature. A coach, for example, is part of the team and not part of the team at the same time.

These are liminal roles because they are associated with growth and change, which involve breaking, shifting, or otherwise transcending boundaries

In liminal thinking, the most important material to understand is belief.

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

How Beliefs Shape Everything

The following 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.

Beliefs Are Models

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. —John Lennon

Just as one pair of hands cannot touch everything in the world, one pair of eyes cannot see everything in the world.

A belief is something you hold in your mind, a kind of map or model of that external reality. But just as maps and models can be wrong, so can beliefs. And just as following the wrong map can get you into dangerous places, a wrong belief can get you into trouble.

This is especially common among people of different political persuasions. These arguments are based on different beliefs. But because people confuse their beliefs with reality, they say the other side is stupid, evil, or crazy. That’s a belief, too, and a very dangerous one.

Beliefs are not reality. They are not facts. They are constructions. You construct your beliefs, even though for most people this is an unconscious process. By beliefs, I mean everything you know.

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.

It’s the same with beliefs. They are like fingers pointing at the reality, which is the moon. Do not mistake the belief for the reality!

If one of the blind men had decided to move in a circle around the elephant, and felt what others were feeling, he would have been operating in a liminal way, challenging his own assumptions and beliefs.

Beliefs are models. Beliefs seem like perfect representations of the world, but, in fact, they are imperfect models for navigating a complex, multidimensional, unknowable reality.

The map is not the territory. —Alfred Korzybski

A neuroscientist named Manfred Zimmermann estimates that our capacity for perceiving information is about 11 million bits per second.

Zimmermann estimates that your conscious attention has a capacity of about 40 bits per second.

But each of those sources is also making judgments, based on their own Belief Pyramids. So you will also need to make theories and judgments about which sources you trust and which you don’t.

In essence, as people, we simplify reality to reduce its infinite complexity, in order

to make it easier to understand.

But it’s also important to realize that this Pyramid of Belief reduces reality from infinite complexity to a small set of theories, which form the foundations on which you (and everyone else) construct our beliefs.

As I said earlier, it’s easy to confuse your beliefs with reality, and that’s what most people do.

Your beliefs form the fundamental model that you use to navigate the world, to think about things, to decide what to

do and what to avoid, like a map. We form a lot of these beliefs by middle childhood.4

And since you’re the one who built the map, it’s natural to believe that it corresponds to the territory that you are navigating. After all, most of the time, your map gets you where you want to go. So much so that when the map doesn’t get you where you ...

We feel that we’re standing on solid ground here. We think that the ground is reality, that it’s obvious. But we actually constructed this reality. Your “obvious” is one of many versions, and other people have different ones.

Liminal thinking requires you to become more conscious of that invisible belief construction process, in yourself and others.

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

A belief is a story in your head.

This dog had a belief, a story, in his head. The story in his head probably was something like, if I get something good, I better protect it. And anyone who tries to approach me is probably trying to take it away.

The basic recipe looks like this: If you have a need, then look for a belief that provides a rule for action to get the result that you want.

Many beliefs take the form of “If x, then y.” A very simple example would be, if you are hungry (need), then eat (belief). If you follow the implicit rule and eat (action) and that causes you to feel less hungry (result), your belief has been validated.

This is what I mean when I say a story web is one possible version of reality. There were at least two possible worlds I could have created here, one called “problem dog,” and another called “good dog.” One belief leads to a doom loop, the other to a delight loop.

Even though neither the kid nor the parent really wants a tantrum, even though that’s not the goal for anyone, together they are co-creating a tantrum-creation system.