What if we lived in an environment where we had the space for our best ideas to thrive? Our best and most inventive opportunities exist beyond what we are used to…beyond what we know…and far beyond our status quo.
To often we find ourselves in what psychologists call “Liminal Space.” Liminal Space is: “a place where we stand on the threshold getting ourselves ready to move across the limits of what we were, into what we are to be.”
And while Liminal Space is great, for a season, as creative professionals we must constantly be moving forward. We can’t get comfortable on the edge of where we’ve been or where we’re headed. We have to be moving and we have to:
1. Break our routine. Not just break it…destroy it. Get in a place where we are forced to see, think, smell, and experience different things.
2. Be quiet. Shut down sound, distraction, and anything that grabs our attention. In order to go where we need to go, we have to clear the fog around us so we can see the proper route.
3. Fight status quo. Easy to do in groups…hard to do in self. We have to abandon our comforts and the things we have come to count on if we want to get out of our Liminal Space.
4. Be willing to chase your personal next. What is next for you and your art? We fall in love with the things we create that we know are successful, but reaching our potential means being willing to dig deep and find our NEXT art. It’s the sign of great artists.
Great post!
Some of the things I do to engage my personal potential:
Finish that song I keep meaning to get around to.
Become intolerant of excuses to wait instead of giving them a seat at my creative table.
Get around people who are chasing after the “more” of life and run with them.
Relentlessly fight the “Uncle Rico” spirit that spends most of the time reminiscing about a fabled past rather than make history now.