During my own liminal season, in the depths of figuring out my own life-career options, one overriding feeling kept on returning, particularly on weekends, when my mind had more freedom to wander. At this point, I’d been exploring and dabbling with Substack for a few months, but I hadn’t written a post for a while. I just couldn’t commit to it. Space was what I craved, and I was tired being ‘on a mission’ all the time. It was also exhausting and I wanted to pause, and be OK to not think about it. But there were times I wasn’t so kind on myself with my action-orientated default response causing me real frustration. An area that we talk about in Season 2 is how we place productivity in the centre of our lives at the detriment of our health.

Then came the fear. Fear of not being close enough to a solution for change, swiftly followed by pangs of self-doubt. I had no idea what the next month would bring, emotionally, and overall this season just felt unsettled. Uncomfortable. I couldn’t quite grasp how to ‘fix’ the feeling of stagnation.

There’s real science behind this state of play, this liminal neither/nor space and this piece does articulate it very well, both metaphorically and physically. Brains crave predictability and homeostasis, to get into a stable equilibrium, but lucky us, the liminal space is everything but.

It was during this season of uncertainty where I spotted many other folks experiencing the same. The feeling was:

You’re not where you were this time last year

And yet, you’re not quite where you want to be, or you don’t even know where that is

Trying to make peace with liminality is a subject voice coach Leon Trayman talks about in our Oh Yeah conversation.And how we, as human beings, generate fear from the inside from not knowing. How the fear response is generated from the inside rather than a genuine fear of being attacked by a tiger. This fear our brain has conjured is based on thinking of the unknown, not as a reaction to an external factor or stimuli.

To demonstrate this in career exploration terms, Leon shares a wisdom that we all know but don’t practice. Say no to comparison. It’s an absolute no-no to compare yourself to others who are already practising in the career field or role you want to explore. Here’s a reality check from our conversation on this matter:

“...people don't want to take time to do something, they want to get it done yesterday. And so it's like that thing of, the stakes are high, I've got to achieve this thing, I have to have had it done by yesterday. But you know the person who's been spending like the last six weeks, six months, six years, 60 years doing this thing is going to be that much better than you.

So in terms of being able to achieve that thing, they're going to be more capable of achieving it, but also because they've had the time and they haven't had the external pressures of the stakes being high in order to be able to achieve that thing.

Whereas if you're the other way around and you surpass the stakes, because you know you can do the job, there's no risk. Or there's risk, but it doesn’t feel risky.”

In other words, stop striving when in a liminal state. Recognise and identify that you’re in a period of transition and that it's okay to feel uncertain.

As Anna Taylor has beautifully said when it comes to mindful awareness, striving has become the modus Operandi in work and life.

“Non-striving doesn’t mean complete inaction but rather practising in such a way that it is not determined by grasping, either for physical forms or particular mental states”.

Anna’s suggestions for non-striving in yoga practice are also applicable to managing these emotions during the liminal season. I've chosen a few from her book:

Practice vs Perfectionism:

The attitude is one of exploration rather than performance or competition.

Less is often more:

Acknowledging that with less pushing and forcing for a particular outcome, we often lessen strain and gain more peace of mind.

The direction of travel vs destination:

We might acknowledge the difference between an intended direction we wish to move towards or a goal which can feel like an endpoint we should strive towards or judge ourselves against.

Mind/ body connection:

Guiding awareness of how striving manifests physically (e.g. faces straining, breath holding, muscles tensing) can increase students’ awareness of its presence and impact...bigger doesn’t mean better and our practice should not feel like an endurance test.

The Oh Yeah Juice