Stuck in Life? You're in a Liminal Space
45sRelatable and comforting reframe of feeling lost, backed by neuroscience, which resonates deeply with young adults.
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How do I figure out what to do with my life when everything feels possible but nothing feels right? This is a question I got the other day. What I would say to that is that you are probably in what is referred to as a liminal [music] space. You're not quite here, you're not quite there. This is something that a friend of mine, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, who is a neuroscientist, [music] talks about a lot. This whole idea
of liminal spaces, like being in that transitionary period where you've got all these options and you're not entirely sure which one to go for. This is actually like a good place to be. A lot of really interesting life [music] insights and learnings about ourselves come out from these liminal moments. Try and stay in the space for longer than you think is reasonable. [music] Most people jump too far and too quickly to try and get certainty. But
actually, if you're able to sit in that space of discomfort, [music] often good things emerge from that. And then the second thing I would say is that in that space where you've got all these different options but you're not entirely sure what to go for cuz nothing feels right in the moment. The feeling of something feeling right, it very rarely comes before you take action on the thing. The whole idea of Anne-Laure's book, Tiny Experiments, is
that you want to be thinking about running tiny experiments in your life. What are some tiny experiments [music] you can run that will give you insight into how you're going to feel once you're actually on the path. Often things don't feel right until we try them out a little bit. If one of your options is, "Oh, maybe I could be a doctor." I wouldn't recommend applying to med school and going to med school for 6 years
and then finding out. That's not a tiny experiment. That's a very, very, very big and long and arduous and expensive experiment. See if you can do some work experience at a hospital for like 2 hours as a very tiny experiment to see how it feels to be exploring that particular life path.