Liminal Creativity

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The poet Alison Hawthorne Deming wrote: “In ecology, the term edge effect refers to a place where a habitat is changing — where a marsh turns into a pond or a forest turns into a field. These places tend to be rich in life forms and survival strategies.”

Ness Labs • Liminal Creativity

Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, “threshold”) is the ambiguity that emerges in the middle of a fundamental transition. Liminality is the “in-between”, where the space and the participants no longer hold their past status, but have not yet fully transformed to their post-transition self.

Ness Labs • Liminal Creativity

Liminal creativity is new ideas emerging from the unknown, identities changing through challenges, innovations sprouting in the midst of chaos, new beginnings built from the remains of failures.

Ness Labs • Liminal Creativity

What happens in liminal spaces? Doubt, discomfort, unfamiliarity, anxiety. But also growth, change, and discovery. Liminal spaces offer all of the ingredients for creativity.

Ness Labs • Liminal Creativity

Explore the edge. Roam the edge of practices, where they permeate several trends and communities, creating gateways between worlds of ideas; push the boundaries of knowledge by connecting seemingly unrelated ideas; direct your curiosity towards questions that haven’t even been formulated yet.

Ness Labs • Liminal Creativity

Bruce Feiler. Or, as one of my favorite comics says: “It takes about seven years to master something. If you live to be 88, after age 11, you have 11 opportunities to be great at something. Those are your lifetimes. Use them.” Do not fall prey to the self-consistency fallacy. Learn something new. Change careers. Take a risk. Reimagine your identity

Ness Labs • Liminal Creativity

Venturing out of the mind’s perimeter of comfort, in a constant quest for the unknown, liminal creators keep on fueling their imagination by exploring the gray areas that live outside of established categories.

Ness Labs • Liminal Creativity

And some of the biggest turning points in our story happen in the uncomfortable yet liberating liminal spaces where we are free to express our creativity.

Ness Labs • Liminal Creativity

In the words of neuroscientist Gregory Berns, “only when you consciously confront your brain’s reliance on categories will you be able to imagine outside of its boundaries.” Venturing out of the mind’s perimeter of comfort, in a constant quest for the unknown, liminal creators keep on fueling their imagination by exploring the gray areas that live ... See more

Ness Labs • Liminal Creativity

Liminal creativity can help carve a path from disorientation to discovery, from uncertainty to curiosity, from fear to innovation. It can turn scary situations into transformational experiences of self-discovery and self-authorship. In fact, life itself is a liminal space between birth and death.