Creating Liminality Daily
I want to talk to everyone today about an idea I've been thinking about, creating liminal space in our lives. Liminal can mean a lot of different things. And the context of which I've been thinking about liminal space is transitioning within our days.
Most of us know transitions on bigger scales, like getting a promotion, getting married, and starting a relationship. That's typical transition periods in all of our lives, but I think we can take this step and kind of scale it back a little bit. And now that we've all been working from home for quite some time.
I've been thinking about how we transition to different environments when most of the time, the environment around you is looking the same? We have to build in liminal events in our day that help us transition from one state to another and to pull an engineering term or a software term from turning from maybe a zero to a one or going from a one to a zero. The big thing that I do is think about how I set the tone mentally or reset myself mentally going into different events in my day.
The big one is having some hard stopping point for work because, as most of us know, if you're working remotely or find yourself being in work mode more often because there's not as much to be doing right now. I think we have to set boundaries from work even to imagine situations where we have bosses who expect us to be on call more often because there's not much going on, right?
So it's if they notice they need something from you and you're not responding quick enough, they are immediately going to start wondering, Hey, where is Erich? Why is he not responding to his emails right now? Or he should be answering his phone, these kinds of things.
We need to be aware that being on all the time or being in one state for too long is not healthy for anybody. One of the things that helps me here is using lunch as an essential part of my day to get outside. Even though it's cold here in the Midwest now and snowy, getting out and being in the sun for even a little time has helped.
On the days that I go out, I tend to go to the gym now because having that little mid-day reset helps me get into a better state going into my evening. Then toward the evening, I like to wind down in a specific way now, which means many times are taking my shower and meditation.
I only do 10 minutes of guided meditation using Sam Harris's app waking up, but I've come to fall in love with this idea of using meditation as a way to scrub my mind clean from anything that may weigh on me for that day.
I could have a phone call or things that I need to worry about at work coming up tomorrow, new meetings, and mentally prepared for something like that.
But for me, making sure that I separate myself from the working me the nine to five me if you will, is essential because I want to do other things. I have a lot of life ahead of me to put as much as I can into so many different things that I don't need to burn myself out now.
And honestly, too, it's like I could work all the time if it were real if I didn't value these other aspects of myself.
Jumping back to the working out aspect of this is. You don't have to go hard in the gym every day, even if you use it, to make a liminal space.
Like you can go to the gym. As just a transitionary point of after work, I go to the gym, and then I go home and enjoy time with my family or my friends or whoever or whatever.
You can do things like that that help you transition from one part of your life into another so that you don't bring in the baggage of the day with you.
Not only that, but it puts a separation point between your work life and the rest of your life. I think that's important, and this is something I'm working on.
I'm curious if anyone else has played with transitions, or do you have anything like this in your life about transition spaces or liminal events daily?
