“You must be willing to let go of the life you planned so as to have the life that is waiting for you.”
– Joseph Campbell
A year ago I was in Mexico on one of my wife’s yoga retreats.
It was bittersweet as I was trying to find the balance between enjoying the Caribbean beauty of Isla Mujeres while having left the side of my dad at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix.
The medical team had just announced what we all knew, that the cancer treatment was no longer working and dad would enter hospice.
I remember him breaking down in tears as I left the hospital and saying “I’m going to miss all of you.”
Dad left his physical body a month later on April 1, 2024.
And that was just the beginning of a very messy year – a year of change and uncertainty.
As the year unfolded, everything else felt like it was shifting too.
Not in some dramatic, fiery explosion. Just the slow, creeping realization that life as I knew it needed to change.
Important pillars – work, purpose, place, identity – started to feel out of sorts. So instead of waiting for things to crumble, Jill and I took a proactive approach to re-aligning with our evolving vision.
- We sold our craftsman bungalow in Portland and became renters instead of owners for the first time in almost 20 years.
- I took a fractional coach/facilitator/instructor role with a new company that one of my peers started.
- We created a vision for experiential living that will allow us to explore some of the places we love most including Bend, Oregon, San Pancho, Mexico, and Croatia.
But here’s what no one warns you about: Between the life you just demolished and the one you haven’t built yet, there’s a strange, shapeless in-between.
It’s the moment mid-renovation when you realize, Oh, wait. All the predictable routines, people, and places are now different or gone.
It’s the caterpillar inside the chrysalis. No longer what it was, but not yet what it’s becoming. Just a dissolved soup of potential.
Anthropologists have a word for this space: liminality – from the Latin līmen, meaning “threshold.”
It’s the ambiguity that emerges in the middle of a fundamental transition. It’s the “in-between,” where the past is gone, but the future hasn’t fully taken shape.
Think about a student who just submitted their last essay but hasn’t graduated yet. A couple who’s engaged but not married. The entrepreneur who shut down one business but hasn’t launched the next.
These liminal spaces feel deeply unsettling. Our brains resist them because they trigger uncertainty, and uncertainty feels like danger.
That’s why so many people scramble to fill the gap as fast as possible – taking the first job that comes along, jumping into a new relationship, or forcing a rushed pivot.
But when we rush to rebuild, we don’t actually change. We just recreate old patterns with new wallpaper.
The people who thrive in liminality – the ones who transform uncertainty into something extraordinary – are those who learn to sit in the discomfort.
Here’s how:
1. Get in the Flow
When the ground shifts beneath you, the only thing you truly control is your attention. Instead of grasping for certainty, channel your energy into something creative. Ask yourself: Where do I want to funnel my focus right now? Then immerse yourself in it. The more you let go of controlling the outcome, the more room you create for unexpected opportunities.
2. Reinvent Yourself
A very well known comic 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.”
Liminal spaces are an invitation to start fresh. Learn something new. Change careers. Take a risk. Reimagine who you are. You don’t have to be who you were yesterday.
3. Document the Change
Transitions shape us, but we rarely recognize the transformation while we’re in it. Whether through journaling, writing a blog/newsletter, or photography, capture the process. Your future self will thank you. And as you start seeing patterns in how you navigate change, you’ll be better equipped for the next transition.
Here’s what I’ve learned: Liminality isn’t a void. It’s a blank canvas.
And while it’s tempting to fill the empty space as quickly as possible, what if, instead, you used it to create something entirely new?
So if you find yourself standing in the wreckage of something that used to feel solid, wondering what the hell just happened – maybe, just maybe, that’s not a bad thing.
Maybe it’s making room. Maybe it’s handing you the gift of a new beginning.
And what comes next might be far better than anything you could have built if you just kept going down the same path.
Live bravely,
Michael
