Perspective

Life is about perspective and how you look at something... ultimately, you have to zoom out. Whitney Wolfe Herd

This month NASA revealed the first images from the James Webb telescope. Conceived in the 1980’s by forward thinking scientists seeking to explore the infrared spectrum it was launched in December 2021 into a solar orbit. 

This project required insatiable curiosity, imagination, forward thinking, meticulous planning, perseverance and determination. They said at launch 344 things could go wrong. None did.  All the deep space images will be accessible to scientists around the world to share the knowledge, beauty and mystery of our universe dating back billions of years before earth even existed.  Putting earth into this perspective is humbling at best.

Perspective is everything when you are experiencing the challenges of life. Joni Eareckson Tada

In NLP time line therapy we zoom out to perceive our situation in third person. If you feel overwhelmed close your eyes and imagine viewing your situation as if watching a movie, then keep zooming out until you are looking at planet earth from afar, keep zooming u

Betwixt and between

Honour the space between no longer and not yet. Nancy Levin

Liminal space has its root from the Latin ‘limen’ or threshold. It is the time between the ‘what was’ and the ‘next’,  a place of transition, a season of waiting, and not knowing. It is where all transformation takes place, if we learn to wait and let it form us.

Historically it was used to depict a phase in a hero or heroine’s journey. More recently, the concept has been adopted to represent potent spaces of transformation when an individual, group or culture is no longer in a previous state but is not yet in the new state; when old ways of being no longer work but the new ways have not yet emerged.

Liminal spaces exist solely to be travelled through but not lingered in.  Physical examples include corridors, hotels and roads. In our lives, rites of passage between teens and adulthood or pregnancy. Franciscan friar Richard Rohr states that This is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed. If we don’t encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealising normalcy. These thresholds are inevitable and disruptive.

The magic lies in between things. Charles De Ling

When there is no possibility of retreat we will find the innovation that only the liminal situation can bring. In short we find the leap of faith. Alan Hirsch and be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to accept the life that is waiting for us. Joseph Campbell