Liminal, Not Limited: What High Performers Get Wrong About Being in Between

I love science fiction and I recently binged Dark Matter, the Apple TV+ series based on Blake Crouch’s novel. The main character, Jason, finds himself trapped in an infinite hallway lined with millions of doors, each opening into a different multiverse. He panics and doesn’t know which door to choose. These doors lead to a reality that is determined by the emotional state he’s in the moment he reaches for the handle. Panic opens one world. Clarity opens another. Calm open yet another. There is only one corridor but the doors are infinite.

Have you ever been in a corridor where you felt the pressure of having to choose which one to step through and to decide quickly? It can feel suffocating instead of liberating. At times, you want to just find the door that led you to the corridor in the first place. I’ve been there. The rising C-Suite executives and leaders whom I’ve coached have been there and may still be there. That hallway represents that in-between space of who you once were and who you’re becoming. The moment when the old role, the old identity, the old story no longer is your reality but at the same time, the next one hasn’t quite materialized yet.

That in-between place is the liminal space. It’s where and how you determine what becomes possible on the other side.

Image source: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/dark-matter

Liminal space is a threshold that may be uncomfortable, disorienting, and generative. Limited space is the opposite. When we are limited and limiting ourselves, we are boxing ourselves in, putting up barriers, and unable to see beyond those walls.

In most cases, those walls exist only in the mind. And when that happens, we operate from fear. Fear is not subtle. It hijacks the amygdala and collapses our options to three: fight, flight, or freeze. All three are limiting. When we fight, we risk damaging the very relationships and opportunities we need. When we flee, we abandon possibilities that would have materialized if we had simply waited. And when we freeze, paralyzed by analysis and suspended in indecision, we risk being consumed by the very uncertainty we refused to move through.

The leaders I most admire have learned to reframe their situations not as problems but as opportunities. They see choices not as right or wrong, but as a direction that can be shifted and even reversed given the right conditions. They are fully in control of the space they occupy and their mindset.

People who are limited ask: How do I get back to where I was? When will this uncertainty end? What will people think if I change direction? What if I fail?

People who are liminal ask: What is this uncertainty trying to show me? What would I attempt if I wasn’t afraid of the answer? Who am I becoming, and what do I need to let go of to get there?

During the pandemic, everything went out of sync at once for everyone, everywhere, all at once. Work and life were completely upended. For those of us in leadership positions, the familiar rhythms of purpose, structure, and identity were suddenly unrecognizable. My two kids were in elementary school at the time and my mom had just started living with us after my dad passed. I felt disoriented and burnt out. I needed space to take stock of everything. It was in that window that I found the Hudson Institute’s LifeForward program. McLean writes in The Great Rest, that this kind of moment of when “our identity shifts in significant ways and we cannot recover the old identity” She calls it a “golden leadership moment” to create something different before charging forward.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I needed liminal space to cocoon.

Frederic Hudson and Pamela McLean, founders of the Hudson Institute of Coaching, helped define the liminal space in their cycle of change model. There are four phases: Go For It, the season of high energy and purposeful execution where everything is fully aligned; the Doldrums, when the old routines stop working and everything starts to feel out of sync; Cocooning, the quiet interior work of healing, reimagining, repurposing; and Getting Ready, the exploration phase where there is experimental re-emergence into possibility. McLean describes the Go For It phase as the time when “things are humming, we are aligned and feeling deeply on purpose.” Most high achievers are comfortable in this phase, but are deeply uncomfortable when they’re in the other three.

Societal expectations exacerbate our anxiety because when we aren’t launching a product, or getting to the next promotion or posting our “wins” on social media, we feel that we don’t have a purpose. So when the Doldrums arrive, we treat them as problems to be solved and we try quickly to make a mini-transition usually to a new job so that we can “Go For It” again and get that adrenaline rush. Many people skip the Cocooning stage completely because it’s too uncomfortable sitting still in quiet reflection. When there’s no productivity and there’s not much to show for the passing of time, we interpret those periods as “something is wrong” or worse yet, “something is wrong with me.”

Perhaps nothing is wrong with you. You may simply need some liminal space.

Think of the corridor less like a waiting room and more like a workshop. And like any good workshop, what you do inside it determines what you’re able to build on the other side. Here are three ways to make the most of your time in liminal space.

1. Manage your emotions. Your emotional state isn’t just how you feel, it is what you are building toward. Fear narrows. Curiosity expands. Anxiety about which door to choose is energy spent on the wrong question. Before you reach for any handle, notice what emotions you are carrying and try to name them as a start. This emotions wheel may be helpful when we lack the vocabulary. Another resource is the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method. When anxiety spikes, engage your senses deliberately: notice 5 things you can see, 4 you can hear, 3 you can touch, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste.

2. Visualize the world you want to step into. In Dark Matter, Jason’s companion Amanda gets them to a utopian version of Chicago simply by focusing on a world where people have empathy and technology serves humanity. She doesn’t have a map. She has an intention. You don’t need a complete plan for what comes next. You need enough clarity about what matters to you to orient the door you open. Vision doesn’t require certainty, but some patience and intentionality.

3. Take courage and open the door. The corridor is not the destination. At some point, staying in the in-between becomes its own kind of limitation. The leaders who emerge from liminal space well aren’t the ones who waited until the fear disappeared. They’re the ones who opened the door anyway, knowing that the act of choosing is itself what creates the next reality. Sometimes it helps to step through the door with a trusted advisor or coach by your side.

Liminal or limited? When you decide and reach for the next door, what are you carrying? Because in the corridor, your inner state isn’t just your experience. It’s your destination.