124: Penney & Jenny Show — Embracing Liminal Space (the In-Between)

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of the Only Move that Matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to.

The Penny and Jenny Show. I am here with my dear friend and podcast collaborator Penny Pierce. I interviewed Penny several years ago and now we have a whole spin off series that we do from time to time still on the Pivot Podcast channel. This is our eighth episode installment and we have a whole series coming your way. We just had so much fun recording the first episode that we kept building from there and in fact these episodes with Penny are some of the ones I get the best feedback from from all of you who are listening. I I hear so many kind words about Penny and we enjoy riffing on these. If you don't already know or you haven't listened to any Penny and Jenny show episodes, you can actually get to a SoundCloud playlist that has all of them in one place@pivotmethod.com pjshow what that might mean is you don't know about Penny Pierce, who's one of my longtime mentors from afar, who then became a friend tour and just one of my favorite people on the planet. Penny is the author of several game Changing books, certainly in my Life, the Intuitive Way, Frequency Leap of Perception, Dream Dictionary for Dummies, and her latest, Transparency Seeing through to Our Expanded Human Capacity, among others. Penny, I'm so happy we're back. Welcome to the show.

Me too. I missed you.

I know. I missed you too. And I said we gotta just hit record because as we were saying that we missed doing this, I said it's on me. Because in my liminal space, which is the topic of today's show, and in Pivot, I refer to this phase of creation as a plateau. And it wasn't really a plateau. And liminal space isn't really a bad thing, but I just couldn't get it together to schedule and record something. So I'm just really happy that we're back.

I know. I think, you know, often we do have to just loop away from what we've been doing. It looks like we're leaving, but it's really, we're not. And then we come back around and we're all fresh and new and new things have come into our life so that the perspective on things is a lot different because I've been in my own version of that. You know, I think we've both been in this kind of. I know you've been traveling a tremendous amount and I've been rebranding and redesigning my website myself, which is taking a long time, and starting to do online classes, which took a lot of development. So in some ways it's kind of odd. I feel like I've been awfully busy, but kind of housebound, where I usually travel a lot more. So it feels like I'm not doing anything. You know what I am just.

And I don't know whether that's liminal space or not. I guess we'll get into that, but maybe we should catch up a little bit more with what we've both been doing.

That sounds great. I know for you, your book Transparency came out in October of 2017, and it's such an interesting point in the creation process where you finally launch this thing that you've been working on tirelessly and then what was your experience like in the year? Now it's a year and a half since launching, and in fact, probably by the time this comes out, it might even be closer to two years. How does that post launch lead into liminal space?

Well, of course, right after it launches, there's all the promotion stuff that goes on and then that's really busy. But then after that sort of peters out, you just kind of wait a little and see who picks up on it. And then there are sales and then there's a kind of a lag in sales and then there's new things that come and help it sell. So it's sort of.

Yeah, it's a bit of a waiting thing where internally I'm always pressuring myself thinking, oh, I better get on it again, you know, and keep pushing and pushing. But I know with a couple of my other books, especially Frequency, it just took off and so it's still selling all on its own. You know, I don't do anything hardly about it, but the information and the energy of the product, I guess you would call it all on its own, just starts to connect with people.

So it's an odd thing, I guess, when you hit that and we will define liminal space, but when you hit that, part of your mind thinks that something's wrong, that you have to do something more, you have to use willpower. And then if you relax and settle down often the flow takes kind of care of itself. It does things on its own. And we're not really quite used to that, I don't think.

Yeah, it's funny because even those of us, you especially, who are writing about this and speaking about this and live, try to just live in that state of flow. Maybe not a flow state, as Mihaly Csikszentzentmihalyi defines it. You know, the edge of challenge and skill, but certainly going with the flow of energy and where the mind and heart of that book is taking you just as much as you might be taking it somewhere, and yet we still often can resist it. It's like even if we know that this post launch phase, a plateau, a liminal space, even if know that it's part of the process, what is it that we so often feel allergic to it? And in fact, maybe, maybe that's a good moment for. Could you just define liminal? Because I have to say, a couple years ago I didn't even know what that word meant. Now I hear it all the time.

Me neither. I learned it a couple years ago. And it really comes from, I don't know whether it's Latin or what, but the origin of the word means a threshold. And I take it to mean, you know, that there is a space right before the threshold and a space right after a threshold. It's like you're standing in a doorway and right before you get to the doorway, you have to go through some sort of a shift to get out of the previous space to get into a kind of a neutral space where you can enter the doorway and then into another kind of neutral space where you exit the doorway. But the new thing hasn't really started yet. So it's so much like the, you know, the caterpillar going into the pupa and then coming out the butterfly. And, you know, I've learned from some science program that, you know, what happens in the cocoon is that the caterpillar actually liquefies itself, you know, and before the raw material of its body can reformulate as the body of the butterfly. So in some ways I think that's what we do at the end of a phase is we melt down, you know, and we reform. And that process of melting down and reforming and moving through the threshold is one that cannot be directed by your left brain, you know, and all of your shoulds and logical proof and everything. It just, it's too miraculous, it's too undefined in some ways. And it's so necessary is the other piece of it. But I think we don't understand that it even exists half the time, you know, that how important it is to actually have a conscious time where we allow ourselves to be re patterned. We let go of the old pattern which may be limiting us, move into open space and the imaginal realm or whatever unified field or whatever we want to call it, breathe for a while, relax and noodle around and then allow somehow that non physical realm helps us get new information or a new pattern to what is going to motivate us. And then somehow those butterfly particles come together in the new body, you know, so liminal is to me it's like a really magical experience. But as you said, it's also scary.

Yeah, I found a cool related definition. This is from Wikipedia. In anthropology, liminality is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage when participants no longer hold their pre ritual status, but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. It's just like the butterfly metaphor that you just so beautifully shared. And it was funny, Penny, because as you were talking, you said, we feel a limit, we're hitting a lim limit. And it's very similar to the first part of the word liminality. You can kind of sound the same. It's almost like the current way of operating. You've hit a limit and it's a time of breakthrough and transformation. I know for me, part of the reason that it seems to grate against what my mind thinks I should be doing, keyword should there and keyword mind, is that our society is not at all set up in a way to honor liminality and certainly the work world. And even in this wild and crazy content production arena. I know I certainly feel like from the day I launched my podcast in 2014, there was this almost unconscious pressure. Well, gotta release weekly and there's never a chance to take a break unless you're one of those shows that launches in seasons, which, you know, I didn't really decide either way. I was just scrappily getting this thing off the ground. But when it came time for me to take a pause. I actually didn't know how long the break was going to last. I didn't know how much time I would need. I just knew that the joy that had been sparking for me was not there. Not because I didn't love this podcast anymore, but the shifts, the breakthroughs that I needed to go through in my personal life and in parts of my business, they couldn't happen while juggling all the tasks that were associated with getting a podcast out from start to finish. And it's just not built into our work world that, oh, yeah, take a break whenever you need it and pulse in terms of your content production rather than making sure you email people every week and launch a show every week or they'll forget about you. I mean, that's just not true.

I know. And it's all, you know, I always talk about a lot of things with the left brain, right brain, and left brain being that, you know, that part of us that defines everything and locks down meanings, and it's very verbal and doesn't really like change too much because it's already defined the way life is, and it doesn't handle change, and it's kind of rooted in the past, but it keeps us in that high motivational state because it associates stopping with loss, you know, and that at least you have your. Your podcast. You're doing Jenny, you know, and you know how to do it, and you're doing the email, and all that stuff is a security, you know, and if you stop it, then suddenly, wait a minute, there's this fear of if I don't move forward constantly with willpower, then I'm going. If I stop or pause, I could fall into the void, you know, I could, like, totally lose my momentum. And then, then where will I be? No one will know me. I won't be able to make up to where I was before because I won't be motivated anymore. You know, there's all these reasons that we have for keeping on, keeping on, and I think that when we come to the end of a. Of a cycle of creativity, often what happens is that we, you know, you do get bored. That's one of the key signs, is like, I'm losing my kind of juice and passion for it, and I'm making myself do it out of habit. But the more you make yourself with willpower, continue on, then the more drained you get. And so pretty soon you can really exhaust yourself. Unless you notice early on that, oh, wait a minute, I'm finished with this. I've done this For a while I really learned what I wanted to learn. I've enjoyed it. And now maybe I need a different perspective or I need to shift it somehow or something. I don't know what it is yet, but I'm bored.

I am so glad you brought up the boredom thing because I do a lot of work within companies, specifically big tech companies or global organizations that already have a somewhat innovative culture. And I'm telling them, just like at Google, often they put so much energy in hiring the best and the brightest. But how do you keep them? And not just that, how do we make it so that pivot points and plateaus, whether it's within a company or you're running your own business, are not a problem. That actually that boredom is a sign that you've outgrown your previous career incarnation or business incarnation. So for me, even though I've been self employed for over eight years now, I'm not pivoting out of running my own business. That's the right kind of like, what's a butterfly metaphor? I think my butterfly is living in the right backyard. But that boredom is just nothing wrong. You're not a bad person, you haven't done something wrong. It's actually a sign, it's a good thing. And it's a time that we can pause if we're willing and instead of beating ourselves up, say, what's going on here? Why isn't this sparking joy? And I learned so much from you about willpower and almost to just notice any time that I'm deploying willpower is probably a sign that I'm not.

Right. Because when you're actually in the flow, you trust it and it brings you what you need. And you can relax a lot because things do show up right when you need them. Not too early, not too late, and it works perfectly. The left brain isn't really connected to the whole, whereas the right brain and the body really are vibrational and they resonate and they connect to, you know, all the beings or all, you know, every, all the events in the world. And therefore they can feel things coming, you know, and you know that something's going to be brought to you without you having to go and hunt it down and capture it, you know. But I think that the whole idea, like you're saying about endings is like, we do not like endings, you know, and for so many odd reasons, because I notice a lot of times when something ends like, or I'm not getting the kind of work I thought I should be getting, or people aren't buying the books as much as they should, or blah, blah, blah, I think I did something wrong. I think something's wrong. You know, that's my left brain. Oh, I should have done more, better, differently, etc.

Well, I like how you even describe that by saying blah, blah, blah, like, clearly there's a part of you that didn't even care about those things, at least not in a way that you would be, quote, supposed to from, according to the marketing team at your publisher.

Exactly. But, you know, there is that thing that when you end something, there is this. It's almost like a kind of a shock in a way that hits you, I guess, and. And you will turn it on yourself rather than realizing, oh, oh, I just completed something. What did I just learn? And let yourself be satisfied at that and pleased. Look at what I just did, like a little kid, you know, and really enjoy, consciously enjoy the completion of something. I made that book. It is physical now. You know, it came out of my head and it is a physical thing now. Wow, cool. Instead of thinking, oh, now, oh, now whatever's going to happen, I don't know, and I'm in the unknown. So trying to correct that, I think, is one big thing. It's just we need a conscious way of recognizing that something is completing, and that means it's okay to take your attention out of it. You don't have to keep it around all the time forever. You can let it go, and if it's right and if it's good for you and you like it, it'll come back.

Like the Penny and Jenny show.

Okay, so much is coming up as you say that first, I think even focusing on left and right brain, and this is completely from you, but even when we talk about the right brain being more in a state of flow, we have brain centers, we have neurons in our gut and in our heart. So there's also a full body brain that we can tune into that's just. That goes even deeper than what we traditionally picture in our head. And I think what you're saying about these completion moments and celebrating, it's so important. And the reason that I have trouble with it sometimes is that we know launching a book, launching a product is a clear completion moment. But what's interesting for me is when the liminal space starts asserting itself.

Without a natural launch or in the middle of something where, yeah, things are going along and it's sort of ambiguous and I know, I think even with the podcast, like, what's going on here? I love this podcast, You Know, I love interviewing with people. I love connecting. What's happening? It wasn't clear to me right away. Oh, got to put it on pause. And it kind of ties into a third thing, which is liminal space that comes from something ending like taking a leave of absence from school. That was a very different situation. It was almost a parallel process of liminal space. Because although publicly, I wasn't producing anything, I was having a complete business renaissance. As soon as I paused school and took a leave, I just got sick. So much energy back. Not only did I get time back, but I started and I affectionately dub it JB 3.0, even Momentum 3.0. We're totally revamping it behind the scenes. I've added new people to my team and I've been reading business books again. For the first time in, I don't know, five years. I have not felt the need to just do a deep dive on business structure and business systems. And so it's interesting that even.

Publicly, what would look like just Mia absent behind the scenes, there was quite a lot happening. And I guess that takes us back to the butterfly metaphor, that just because you cannot see something outside of the cocoon doesn't mean there aren't tremendously miraculous processes happening on the inside.

That's right. And that's where you really have to have a kind of a faith in yourself. Because, you know, in your case, going to school, that was a huge thing for you to get in and get involved in all of that study and everything.

At a certain point, it must have been that you started to feel this odd tension or contraction or double meaning, like, I want it, I don't want it, that kind of ambiguity.

And when you can really realize it at an early stage.

And sense that if I keep going in this direction, I'm going to get more and more drained. You can kind of intuitively track down that path and you can feel how your body's going to be feeling if you keep at. And so what you did, which was really smart, was go ahead and have the courage to take that leave of absence. And as soon as you did, it's almost like your non physical soul self said, all right, we have some other things here that want to come into this open space. And that's often what happens. Sometimes it happens very quickly, like in your case. But other times there's a stewing or a gestating period, you know, And I mean, I've had it where often when you start to pull out of an old cycle that you've been involved with for a long time, and you even have identity invested in it, and that holds it to you even more so. But as you start to disengage from it, it takes a little while to disengage and you go into these stages. I wrote a couple of them down, so I'll just list these. But when you start to move into that liminal space, you're going to feel like you're in between, that you don't know something, that the old way is boring, or it's damaging to your body and soul, that you're out of your comfort zone. You haven't found an answer yet, and you really want one. You can't seem to imagine your future or the flow seems to have stopped. And then often you lose meanings and security during phases like that. And as you allow that to be, you know, you just say, okay, you know, this is the way it is. That helps you get through it, I think, is just to be. But of course, your left brain, which wants meanings, will often go quite nuts during this undefined stage because, you know, it wants to know what to do, what to emphasize. Let's plan for something. Let's figure something out. It doesn't tolerate that anxiety and ambiguity at all. So it will tend to at that point. Often if you resist being.

You'Ll go almost like into an opposite thing, like a real distraction thing that the left brain will throw you into. Stuff like irritability and reactionary behaviors and panic, avoidance, addiction, manic activity or numbness and depression. You know, just to have something to do.

You know, you might even get some kind of trauma or drama or accident or illness. It's just something to do so that you don't have to face, you know, the void. It's the avoiding the void.

You wrote this great piece on the importance of endings and the in between, and we will share it as a bonus for this episode. So real quick, in case you want the show notes in the transcript, you'll just go to pivotmethod.com124 pivotmethod.com 124 I'll link to Penny's article and this great guide on intuition and ultrasensitivity of how do you know? What does your body tell you? But in this article, Penny wrote, avoidance is a key word here. A dash void. Brilliant. Basically, it means to resist emptiness. Stay away from the void. So often we try to leap over the imagined chasm of nothingness to a new involvement. For most of us, endings are choppy, disruptive experiences. That we invest very little true attention in. And you mentioned Penny. My choice to leave school and go on leave happened pretty quickly, but I actually see it as a muscle that you nailed it. I was starting to feel this tension, both tension with my time. It was getting very challenging to do my schoolwork and keep my business running. Not to mention, I had stopped working out, meditating, seeing friends. I had already moved a lot of that. That's not sustainable to put the rest of my life on hold. But increasingly, I was leaving the day, school days. I tried to stack my classes, and I was drained. And whenever I was reading and doing homework, I was energized. But at the end of the school day, I was coming home really drained. And there was almost a culture clash of my energy and the energy of the school and at least the classes I was in. That was very odd. And I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I wasn't sure what to do. Business was starting to pick up. I was starting to gain momentum that I had been building for. For 10 years. And so knowing this, talking with you, reading your work, and even incorporating some of Tosha Silver's work, there came a day where I just said, I don't know what to do here. Show me. Show me what to do, universe. And I kind of just said, I throw my hands up. I don't know what to do here. I need some guidance. Within 24 hours, I had five new training dates requested from two of my biggest corporate clients. Five. Five. Two people. Two people had emailed and said, jenny, we want to book you for this, this, this, and this and this. Two series. And, you know, many of those training dates were happening during the semester. So I already had one teacher. Talk about resistance. I already had one teacher who was saying, no, you can't miss more than one class, which I had already missed. So I didn't do a good job either. Bottom line is, all the signals were saying, there's not a fit here, there's a clash. But of course, making the decision to leave, I still felt bad. I still felt like, oh, no. But so many people were excited that I was going, and I was excited. Excited. And it's not like me to leave something halfway through. Halfway through the semester, even. I did six weeks of work that just won't be counted toward anything except my own edification and just dropping a master's halfway through. It's weird because leaving something incomplete is really not part of my identity. My mom always raised me to finish the season if I ever wanted to Quit a sports team or a dance class. She always said you don't have to do it next year, but you got to finish what you started and what you committed to this year.

But I like that, Jenny. I think that in some ways it's a different kind of pivot. You know, it's okay when you know to. I think we do this, we place ourselves into situations to test some idea that we have unconsciously in ourselves. Like for instance, you may have gone back into that school model which is very structured and left brained and hierarchical and academic because part of your mind thought that that was the way to go or that was something important to have. But that's not who you are, that's not the way you actually succeed in this world today you're more self motivated than that. So it's like I think you went into it to, to feel it out and see how is it now? Do I like it now? Is this going to be the thing? And then go, nope, nope, this isn't it?

Well yeah, or either it's not it or it's not now, but either way it's not now. And you're so right. I had not considered that. It's this layering. You know, I talk a lot about, think of your career like a smartphone and there's an old operating system that's the school model and even the corporate model. And it just doesn't fit. I don't think it fits me, my body, my business, my energy or where we're heading as a society, to be honest. It's exhausting and it's too slow. It's too slow, it's too structured, it's too hierarchical, it's too based on too much, based on willpower and shoulds and sort of forcing things. And I just love your connection there that there's almost a new operating system that had taken over. And in fact when I, when I said I was going to school, I said I'm putting myself in the path of pivot. I don't have an end goal, I don't know where it's going to take me. And even now a couple months, you know, having been on leave and I'm still going to, I'm going to stay on leave in the fall, as in I'm already deferring my leave. I still don't know what was the point of school. Like I learned so many things and it definitely expanded my scope around all kinds of insights. Not only about religion, about Christianity, about Buddhism, about the social justice world and what that's like, I mean, many different things, but on the whole and how it relates to the rest of my business, I still have no clue. I just know I'm not meant to be there right now.

But you know, each one of those things that you just mentioned could be like a seed that each one, in time, it sends down roots and it grows and it starts to.

Give you associated ideas from the traditional way, that each one is kind of like a little, you know, the way a pearl grows from a disturbance in the shell, that there's something there, that each one of those things is going to expand out into your own kind of expanded thinking, if that makes sense. But I do think, you know, but even though it wasn't exactly right for you, when you leave it, you still go into liminal space for a moment. Definitely.

Oh yeah. And again, that liminal space of professionally not really knowing where I stand or what's next, even as I do JB 3.0 and Momentum 3.0, even the podcast rejuvenating it. I'm like, who am I? Why are people here? There are so many podcasts now. I really don't know. I really can't put my finger on it. I don't always have an easy time differentiating myself from anything else. And even if you could tell me, as my friend or any of you listening and by the way, I'm all ears, would find it very helpful to have some outside perspective. But it's like we can't always know it about ourselves, even if it seems obvious to others. And I want to hear from you too, Penny, because I know we talk about the post launch goo state where you're kind of just in a goo state, but then I think follows the liminal state and they're a little bit different. And I would love to hear your experience of after all the marketing for the book, what was your goose state? And then where do you find yourself now? Even like, even liminal or emerging from it.

Right.

I took my attention away from writing and started to move into. Ended up getting involved with a group of people actually in New York and got all excited about some projects and then that went through a cycle and then it was kind of like your school experience. It was like, oh, wait a minute, this is not what I thought it was. And we actually all have different purposes here. And so I had to leave and loop away and everybody's still, you know, fine, but it's separated. Then when I had that really, that was the liminal space then. So what's next? And I Realized.

I need to really, really think now what? How will my work evolve? Who do I want to talk to? How do I want to get this body of knowledge that's come through me over all these years? Who do I want to get it to? Then I realized, you know, I really want to get it to people who are leaders and facilitators and who are able to influence other people so that it can have an impact more. So then I started in on that. But, you know, I think there was a time, I mean, I've had this happen before, where I remember one time, especially after I moved from San Francisco in the Bay Area, where I'd been so active and everything, to Florida, which is because my mom had gotten sick. And it was a shock, a psychic shock. And I remember at that point that I was kind of walking around in this new house that I had, and I started to feel like a stranger in my own life, you know, And I would have these thoughts like, who is driving this car to the market?

Or who needs food to eat and, you know, and stuff to drink? Who's walking this body down the hallway? And, you know, how did I get here? Kind of thing. Like, you know, it's like a strange little distance from my involvement in my own personality. And I began to feel at that point like my whole story and my history and my bios and everything, it was just not mine. Or maybe I didn't even care to recite it anymore. It was kind of boring to me. Like, I'm not just that. And, you know, those stories could belong to anyone if they wanted them, the stories. And then I thought, well, maybe I'm going to die soon. Then I went, no, no, no.

You know, that kind of got me thinking about what is it like to live without.

An identity that you're so locked into. And I think that's a stage in our spiritual growth. At a certain point, you don't need to represent yourself as a thing so much.

You said something so powerfully, too, about feeling like a stranger in your own life.

Yeah.

Wow. Wow. And what you just said is brilliant, too. In fact, Michael was just reading to me something from Carl Jung earlier this morning, that there's a difference between change and transformation. Change is happening all around us. The world is always changing, but we are the ones that have the choice to transform. So as your life changed, you actually did face that. Am I going to transform now? And that's where the spiritual growth comes in.

That's right. Yeah. I always. When I teach, I always talk about the Difference too. That change is like you have a bunch of objects on a tabletop and you're just moving them around into different configurations. But transformation is the dimensional thing. It's like if you took a point and you put a bunch of points together, it would form a line. Okay, that's a. That's a transformation. Then put a bunch of lines together and you get a plane. That's a transformation. You put a bunch of planes together, you get a cube. Right. Now the next big change is going to come out of three dimensional cubic reality into what I think is spherical reality. And that changes the way we understand time and space and who we are. And, you know, it's a major shift of perception. So, yeah, I mean, that transformation is.

You know, people have done it throughout time, certainly monks and spiritual people, but it's not common, you know, and that's what's actually pretty fascinating to me. But so much of it is the willingness to go into that limit space. You know, part of my process during that really undefined time was that I started to want to sleep in the guest room of my house instead of in my actual bedroom.

Really?

Oh, I went, I did. I went in there and I was telling friends I'm a guest in my own life, you know, And I kind of enjoyed feeling like I was visiting this new place and perspective that I was sort of opening to an up and coming life.

But I let myself explore that. Like I didn't really belong, but I was.

You know, being a guest is an interesting consciousness.

And. And then, you know, I just let it be and things started to gradually show up again and people, you know, invited me places to do things. And then I got ideas for a new book. And then everything starts to rol again, you know, and maybe that's the other side of the threshold that reemergence.

I'm so glad that you started to talk about how. I think that's really important for us to touch on is practically tactically, what do we actually do when you feel like a stranger in your own life. And one thing I heard you say is just changing your environment or making sort of sleeping in the guest room things that do switch things up a little bit. And before, before we get to that, because I really do want us to come back to that very, very practical advice. You mentioned spherical perception. And I heard you give a talk at the Assemblage. I was very happy to see you in person where you drew the most amazing donut diagram on the board about the difference between typical manifestation techniques and Mindset what we see out there in the world versus everything being here and now in your reality. Can you please enlighten listeners about the difference between spherical perception and the donut hole?

Well, actually, what we're delineating between is linear perception and spherical perception. So I think the illustration I had was that there's like a donut in a doughnut hole. And that's actually the old kind of linear perception, where in the center of the doughnut, which is where you and your soul actually exist and you create your life. If you project your attention out into the outer world that we have this idea that there's an outer world that's separate from us. And if you are always putting your mind out there into the future or the past or somebody else's reality or some fictitious reality or whatever, then you're not in the center. And you can't feel your guidance. You can't feel your connection to your own self and the soul, yourself as soul or yourself as connected to the whole. To the whole unified field, to the whole collective consciousness. And then you start to feel hollow, and your life becomes like a donut around you, you know? And so where you actually exist is in this imaginary hollow center. And that's why people often talk about lack of self worth, or they feel empty and hollow. Like a lot of people who get addicted to food. They're filling this empty void inside of themselves, which is, I think.

That hollow place. So the remedy for that is to suck back in all the little fishing lines you've thrown out into the world. You know, reel it all back in to the center and be in your body, be in the center, feel yourself. I call it your home frequency. Get back into yourself the way you like yourself. You know, your best self, and just be there, because really, that's where you are. And then what happens is the doughnut all gets absorbed into what used to be the hollow center. And it turns into a sphere or a ball. And now there's nothing outside of you because the ball expands and contracts. It's like a. It's an imaginary boundary. It's not really a line between you and anything. It's just your mind taking different focal lengths, you know, but really, there's never anything outside of you from then on. And you have an awareness of unity at that point. You know, that's where the reality shifts. I don't know if I explained that well enough.

That's a great way to put it, that when you look too far out in the future or you see something outside of yourself. There's nobody home. And that's that donut hole in the center that you've left your current reality. And it was just so powerful how you drew that diagram. And that really, the key is to inhibit. Inhibit? No, inhabit. Inhabitants. Inhabit, not inhibit. Where we currently are.

Yeah. But also, Jenny, that is not liminal space. When you vacate.

Oh, right, right, right.

When you vacate out of the center of yourself through projection. Projection, that is really probably the only void that there actually is. It's like a strange imagined void, because once you come back to yourself, it's full again. And that is the irony about the void, which I'm glad I thought of talking about this. Because when we go into that liminal space, suddenly when you first enter it, it feels like it's empty. Because you're finished with something, and you're probably running on empty at that time. You're done with a whole cycle of creation. And as you move out of that, you see through the filter of emptiness. And so it looks like a void, but the minute you let yourself relax and be in that spaciousness, it becomes full. And then you're in the imaginal realm where all things are possible and every variable is there that you can combine in any way you want to. And it's like your playground. And as soon as you're there, you get all motivated again. And actually, it doesn't take that much time. It's actually out of time. But as soon as. As much as we resist being in it, that makes it seem so much more difficult. And then that makes it seem like it takes a lot of time. Does that make sense?

Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely. Because it's such a great point that when we're resisting, feels like it's taking forever. It's never going to end. And as you said, there's a real lack of confidence that starts to happen of, oh, no, everything's slipping away. Fear comes in, and time's gonna really drag. Because probably from that state, you're not even gonna think of your best solutions or what the new you really needs. So let's get into some very practical things.

I can say one thing that happens when I'm feeling in a liminal state. I've gotten much better at just saying, I need a break, and that's okay. And I actually don't need to explain it now. This is going to be harder if you work at a job and you have to show up at the same time every day. But there's also no reason you can't plan Your own staycation coming up if you have the vacation days. But I do think it's important just to acknowledge that, oh, something is happening here. There's a Rilke quote that a new thing has entered upon you and you don't yet know what it is. I'm paraphrasing, but that's the thing. So you don't have to know what it is to just say, this is here. Oh, here it is, that plateau or that liminal state. And so for me, acknowledging it.

And then asking, what am I curious about? So what is feeling friction that I need to pause? Like the podcast. Even if it's not a judgment on the podcast, it's just something about the way I was approaching it, and now, many months later, I know what it is. I didn't have systems that were going to support me in not feeling tired. A podcast, every single episode has 30 micro steps attached to it.

It's a lot of work.

They're like these little avocados, you know, they're. They're like a lot of effort just to get one avocado, and then it's delicious and you're so happy that you have it.

Hopefully.

Avocados.

Yeah.

But, you know, part of it is what you're saying is when we start to enter liminal space, I think the left brain immediately starts to think, how do I get through it? Right? And the thing is, the left brain can't do a thing about liminal space except let go and just, you know, surrender a little bit. And then when you're in it and you let yourself be in, becomes like a magnet for whatever you need to know next. Like you said, the new thing is upon you. And it might be that something that's in the way, some fear, some old habit that is interfering with your progress has to come up and you face it and clear it. Or it could be that you start to have a sense of a new vision for your life or a real sense of yourself, that feeling of yourself without definitions on it, just really enjoying yourself or loving the way your own energy feels or something, you know, and just like a little kid being full of yourself.

But you have to then trust the fact that that liminal space itself is. It has a sanity to it. You know, it knows what needs to happen next. It's like all the little particles of the melted, you know, caterpillar somehow know how to recombine themselves into the butterfly. And that's amazing. How do they know where to go and what to do? But that's the same with us, there's an innate intelligence in this state itself that we can, I mean totally trust. And it does require patience, but patience not to get through it, but more like presence to go into each moment and engage with each moment and feel into what is coming in each moment so that you keep yourself in a state of sort of enjoyment.

That enjoyment piece is so crucial because it's so easy to again reject the liminal space. But you mentioned something about maybe you need to drop old patterns or old behaviors. And it's true, there really is an evolution, a transformation, but you're meant to enjoy it. I really believe that. I really think if we can shift our perspective, we can say, wow, what's happening here? And when I give myself permission to say, what am I curious about right now? What am I being drawn toward? As you said that the liminal space has an intelligence all its own. Then for me, I went down a major learning rabbit hole. I was, I couldn't get enough of a certain type of business book podcasts, I was even getting book ideas, articles, ideas. My brain, my creative energy, actually my creative self was totally reactivated. It just wasn't. It wasn't in a production state. I think there is this time of listening, connecting, channeling, following the energy, following curiosity, absorbing. It's almost. I see it as when the, I think in the early section of a liminal phase, you gotta rest. You really need to true permission to do nothing at all. That's really what we're calling the goo state. You have totally dissolved or you're coming down off of something and that's it. You might need to stay home and watch Netflix all day. But then there's a natural energy that starts to return. And what is that? And what would it look like to meet that energy where it is instead of forcing it to be something, something else. And I experienced that. Even in terms of exercise, I had stopped my regular classes. I moved. So all my regular yoga and Pilates studios are now very far away. And I just gave myself permission, you know, what if I do a 15 minute class or 15 minute self practice, that's enough. And I just needed to give myself that permission. And I even set a goal, two 15 minute blocks a day, because okay, that's a little harder to kind of turn down. And maybe I'd look forward to it more if I didn't see it as this big looming to do.

I think there is something in it about letting yourself when you enter it, going into more of a right brain kind of state where there are no Goals. There's just a sense of one thing coming, emerging, or arising in the moment that you pay it. You notice what you notice. You're allowing yourself to go from one noticing to the next noticing to the next noticing. And without right and wrong or judgment or all the left brain's way of categorizing things and in a way that gets you a little bit out of the to do list and that sort of pressurized state, and it allows you to start to feel your life process. And when you're open into that, I think that the benefits of it are that you learn to trust the flow and you trust your own evolution process. And you. You become more comfortable being with the moment as it is, you know, not trying to enforce a change.

And if you're. You're more into paying attention, like putting attention on and into things so that you penetrate and feeling into your experience. I mean, this is the work at hand. It's not so much mental work as it is. I don't know what you would call that. It is mental, I guess, but it's more experiential. And then the waiting, because the left brain always feels like I'm waiting for this to be over. Then it doesn't cause impatience. It doesn't. You don't even think there's a future thing. It's now. And now is fun. Being quiet doesn't feel like the void anymore, you know, and the whole openness or the spaciousness that you're getting into, all that potential, it's really pleasurable. And as soon as you get filled up, my gosh, there you are on a new cycle of activity and new ideas and new curiosities, and off you go, you know, it's just stay in it, you know, don't project again. Stay with what's happening. And nothing's ever empty. Not really.

Part of what allows me to stay in it is what we touched on earlier is questioning assumptions. Because I think sometimes a lot of the resistance that comes from this liminal state, and it may even come from other people. What are you doing? What are you up to? What's next? You know? And what do you answer? I'm in the now. And the now is fun. Which I love that line, Penny, but it's questioning assumptions. It's, well, what happens if I pause something or I don't mail the newsletter this week or this month or even this year? What happens? And maybe there is some downside. I'm not saying there's never any consequences, but is it permanent? Is it that big? Of a deal. There was a kind of thought exercise and I forget who originated it. It's been quoted many times. But how much will this matter in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years? So another thing that helps me process when I'm in a liminal state or I'm not there, there's no there there of course, but where I'm not totally in a, in a flow again is just saying I'm taking the long term view on my life, on everything I'm creating. And.

That allows me to be in the now because things are less urgent, there's less time sensitivity that we tend to place from the outside world. Now that said, this can be scary to do when you're self employed. So on one hand it could be easier to do because you don't have to show up for anyone else necessarily. But then it's a little scarier because well, you still have to feed yourself.

There's not going to be work coming in if you're not out there doing it right.

And that ties into also the assumptions that you said before is that what are all my have to's, you know, like oh, I have to make this much money, I have to do this, I have to see this many people every. And the money pressure often is tied to that so much. It's not about creating what you love anymore, it's about once you started creating it. Now I have to keep creating it. And it might be that. But if you let go of the pressure to keep on with something you've already done when it's actually time to let go of it.

When you let go of it, you get re patterned, you are rejuvenated, you start to get a new set of instructions for yourself. You get new imaginations and more of your actual true self. And then your self expression becomes probably you expand your scope or you learn to work more efficiently or effectively with less willpower and things happen magically or you know, you get these improvements that you couldn't figure out with your left brain. But you have to have a kind of faith a little bit or go through it a couple times. So you see that oh, this is what happens. You know, it's not just wishful thinking. You know that there are things we're learning that come from like the inner realms about how energy works, how consciousness works. And it's not just all about productivity.

That's such a great reminder. That's so true.

And it's very. I have to say now being married to a Lebanese man that it wasn't until meeting Michael, that I realized just how work focused we are here in America. And not everyone listening lives in the States. But probably if you don't live in the States, you could even observe it even better. But here there's such a pervasive sense in the water that you are what you do, whether it's how you introduce yourself as your career or your job, but even just you are what you produce. We live in a very capitalistic society that orients our worth based on output, producing, production, even creating to an extent. And if we can just recognize that that tremendous pressure that sometimes these transitions and transformations exactly have nothing to do with the learning isn't about learning how to be more productive. It's learning what your soul is here to learn.

Yes. And I think.

It'S often actually learning to be your soul, not just to be your personality and your brain, but to be your soul and be soul directed. And that really means to me, it's an experience of learning to be extremely connected, like in a communion state with all beings. And that would include animals and plants and trees and rocks, you know, everything that we're all so interconnected and everything has consciousness and everything's helping you get ideas, everything's helping you create. Everything's. There's a place for you to put your creations after you've. When you give them away, that the whole takes care of all of us, you know, and you got to be quiet in order to realize that we're not separate from each other. We don't have to use so much willpower, cleverness, you know, and, and be better than others that compare.

And despair is so powerful. Where, I mean, it's almost as if liminal space invites because you're pausing and slowing down. I'm picturing those meerkats that they're like popping up and they're looking around and who's out there? Who's doing what? What do I need to do? And then you go back down into your hole, your burrow, and then you pop back up. Who's out there? What do I need to do? What's going on? And of course a big part of the pivot method is don't do that. Like don't jump right to scanning for people skills and projects before you've done the plant stage, which is all about what's working, what energizes you, and what does success look like a year from now, now at the early stages of elemental state, you might not even know that that's fine, but you can still get that Energy, intelligence about what is working, what are you enjoying, what is energizing you, what are you curious about? And as you said, what do you need to drop? I think that is just as important as what is. Again, what's creating friction and getting in the way of your flow and of your soul.

Too hard at? What are you working too hard at? You know, but also as you enter liminal space, you know, and I think the soul does create this. You know, we go through these cycles of creativity, but it's not by accident that when you're really finished, you're finished because you're finished at a pretty high level. You've learned a lot. And so right at the end there, it's saying, oh, okay, I notice I'm getting bored. I notice I really feel complete. Do I want to keep doing this? Not really. So what have I learned? It's like take inventory, take stock. And kindly with compassion for, look what I've been doing to show myself such and such. And I've learned all these great things and I'm a better and bigger person because of it. And I'm grateful to all the people I've been involved with, you know, so gratitude in a way too is very helpful for completing that previous cycle. And then just getting into the moment saying, isn't it amazing how stuff just shows up around me? You know, look at, there's a coffee cup with coffee in it. You know, wow, how'd that get there? And you know, and just staying in that sort of magical.

Being with state until you're just so relaxed and happy with anything that then the next cycle of stuff comes in and it's just anything. Also, it's like, oh, I could do podcasts again. I think that sounds like fun now. You know, we'll do it in a different way.

Yes. And how do we make it fun? Yeah.

And we talked and we said, well, let's interview each other. Let's talk together on this. Not just be interviewing another person and not you talk because you're the interviewer.

Yep. And we also, we set up a Google Doc. So in fact, I'm going to walk everyone through and we'll start to wrap up this episode with maybe a next action or a non action for listeners to take around this topic. But. Exactly. So Penny and I, we were emailing to reconnect. It's been too long, even as friends. And I was like, you know, I'm so glad you emailed. I'm feeling such renewed energy now around the podcast. I'm improving all my Systems bringing someone on to help. And I said, let's do it. And we set up a Google Doc. We started brainstorming topics. Penny was sending me some of her recent writings. And also we are badging the recording. So we're. Penny and I get to talk for twice as long as you're listening to this episode because we're recording two at a time and just trying it out. How does that go? And maybe that reduces the friction of scheduling four different times. We actually have two blocks. And speaking about the flow state, we get in a flow with each other. So I'm already excited to pause and riff on the next topic and see, huh, maybe we. We're not even starting cold. We already have a whole hour under our belt and we're just trying it out. And that's another thing I'm always plugging around. Pivot is what can I try that at the end of the day, the pivot method. What's working? What does success look like? What's out there? And what can I try? That what can I try is crucial. And so, okay, we know we're both excited. Our energy, our intention is there. What can we try? How can we try to have this be seamless and fun and enjoyable and work in that way? And so it has been really fun, Penny, to collaborate with you in that way. And then we even both said, and then let's just hit record and flow. Let's just see what comes up in the moment.

Right, Right. Yeah. And it's fun even going into our intuition and thinking what topics feel timely, you know, what haven't we talked about before? And what ideas go together, you know, that could make a topic. I love that part too, because it's like, I don't know. I remember as a kid I always used to, like, make mixtures in the kitchen, you know, put ketchup and mustard and whatever. All I could find in the refrigerator together. It's somewhat related to that.

Well, I can only ever talk about what's fresh. And we were saying this before we hit record. I have a really hard time just taking some topic I feel complete around and then talking about it. I really need to say what's real right now. What's my truth with a capital T? And then it's just a super bonus if you and I align around. That can bring different perspectives. So, Penny, let's end this one here and we'll give. This is a teaser for everyone listening that we have more to follow in this series. This next batch of the Penny and Jenny show before we wrap up, Penny, what's one question or reflection or action, which is a funny word for this topic, but that you would have listeners try when they're done listening to this episode?

The word that comes to my mind is self entertainment. I'm not sure. It's almost like if you can just stay in the moment, no matter what's happening, even if you're irritated, and then notice that you're actually entertaining somehow, that you could make it funny, you could make it interesting, you could make it enjoyable, you could learn something, you could reframe it, you could do whatever you like to do that entertains you, but that gets you involved in the moment.

I'm going to build on that and my question will be, what are you wildly curious about? What are you daydreaming about? My friend Neil would say, what is your Saturday morning test? Just tune into that. And you know, for me, I get excited and it goes in waves. What types of podcast episodes are you the most excited when they come into your queue? What kinds of books are piling up on your Amazon wish list, even if it has nothing to do with what you're currently doing or the current version of your life or business? And on that note, if you want an amazing handout from Penny from this episode, it has 33 questions to ask yourself about intuition and ultra sensitivity. It's called how do you know? And I'm going to bundle that with Penny's recent article that we referenced on liminal space. You can grab that@pivotmethod.com 124 that's also where you can find a full transcript for this episode. Pivotmethod.com124 and we want to hear from you. Like I said, these have been some of the most well received episodes and maybe Penny and I don't even know 100% why I think we can have a guest. We both really enjoy each other in these topics, but if you want to ask us a question, we're really interested to do a listener Q and A episode where you'll submit a short voice recording@pivotmethod.com ask and then we'll collect. When we get critical mass, we'll roll them into an episode and Penny and I will play your question on the air and we'll then answer it and riff on those topics together. So again, all the resources from this show are@pivotmethod.com 124 and you can submit a question for us@pivotmethod.com ask. And finally, last but not least, you can also hear the full Penny and Jenny show series either on Soundcloud or go to pivotmethod.com pjshow Penny what a joy.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So great to be here. We are gonna sign off for now and keep an eye out or an ear out for our next installment in the Penny and Jenny show coming soon.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for PivotList, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from the this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter at Jenny Blake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.