Mark: Alright Michelle, I've got a challenge for you. The book is Liminal Thinking. If you had to roast it in one sentence, what would you say? Michelle: Easy. "Congratulations, you've discovered that thinking about your thinking is a thing. Here's a 150-page manual for it." Mark: That is a perfect, if slightly brutal, entry point. And it actually touches on a common critique some readers have—that the ideas feel a bit obvious. But today we're diving into Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think by Dave Gray, and I think we'll find there's a surprising depth beneath that surface. Michelle: I'm open to it. I'm sharpening my skeptical pencil as we speak. Mark: Excellent. What's fascinating about Dave Gray is that he's not a psychologist or a philosopher by trade. He's a designer, an artist, and the founder of a major strategic design consultancy called XPLANE. He comes at this from a place of applied creativity, trying to figure out why brilliant strategies and plans so often fail because of the 'human element.' Michelle: A designer's take on psychology... I like that. It suggests we can actually redesign our thoughts, not just wrestle with them. So where does he start? How do these beliefs that run our lives get built in the first place?

Mark: He starts with a foundational, and honestly, quite unsettling idea. Principle number one is that Beliefs Are Models. They aren't reality itself. To explain this, he uses the ancient parable of the blind men and the elephant. Michelle: Oh, I think I know this one! But refresh my memory. Mark: Of course. A king brings an elephant to his court and asks a group of men who were born blind to describe it. The first man touches the elephant's side and declares, "It's a wall. A huge, rough wall." The second grabs the tail and says, "No, you're wrong. It's a rope." A third man feels the tusk and insists, "It's a spear, cold and hard." Another gets the trunk and describes it as a snake. And so on. They each touch a different part, and they all end up in a furious argument, coming to blows, each one absolutely convinced that their limited, partial experience is the complete truth. Michelle: Wow. So we're all just one of the blind men, absolutely certain our little piece of the elephant is the whole animal. That’s… a humbling thought. Mark: Exactly. We mistake our map for the territory. And this leads directly to his second principle: Beliefs Are Created. They don't just appear; we construct them, often unconsciously. Gray uses a much more modern and sobering example: the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Michelle: That's a heavy topic. How does it connect? Mark: In the aftermath, two completely different, mutually exclusive realities emerged. One "obvious club" saw the story of a young, unarmed black man unjustly killed by a white police officer. Their reality was built on a history of systemic racism and police brutality. Another "obvious club" saw the story of a police officer defending himself from a dangerous aggressor. Their reality was built on experiences of law enforcement and respect for authority. Both sides had access to the same raw data—the same event—but they selected different facts, applied different theories, and constructed entirely different beliefs about what was "obvious." Michelle: And they both felt they were seeing the "truth." They were both holding their piece of the elephant. But some beliefs are just… true, right? Like, gravity exists. I believe the sun will rise tomorrow. He's not saying those are just models, is he? Mark: That's the perfect question. He distinguishes between objective reality—the elephant itself—and our beliefs, which are the stories we tell about it. Gravity is a force of nature. Our understanding of gravity, from Newton to Einstein, is a series of increasingly accurate models. The problem arises when we cling to our models even when new evidence appears. This is his fifth, and maybe most important, principle: Beliefs Defend Themselves. Michelle: How so? It sounds like they have a mind of their own. Mark: In a way, they do. He talks about a "bubble of self-sealing logic." Think about the justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was based on the belief that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. When no WMDs were found, you'd expect that belief to collapse. Michelle: Right. The evidence proved the model was wrong. Mark: But for many who supported the war, it didn't. Their belief system went into defense mode. They generated new explanations: "The WMDs were moved to Syria," or "The inspectors just missed them." The core belief—that the war was justified—was so tied to their identity and worldview that their minds automatically distorted reality to protect it. The belief defended itself from the facts. Michelle: That’s terrifying. It's like our brains have a built-in lawyer whose only job is to prove us right, no matter what. It explains so much about political polarization today. We're not even arguing about the same set of facts anymore. Mark: We're arguing about which elephant we're touching. And Gray's point is that this isn't just about politics; it happens in our personal lives, in our families, in our jobs. He tells a personal story about adopting a rescue dog named Spitfire. Michelle: With a name like Spitfire, I have a feeling this doesn't go smoothly. Mark: Not at first. They gave him a bone, and when their son got close, the dog snapped and bit him. Their immediate belief was, "This is a problem dog. He's aggressive. We have to take him back." That was their model. Michelle: A totally understandable one! Mark: Absolutely. But a dog whisperer offered a different model. She said, "His past experiences have taught him to believe he has to defend his food to survive. You need to create new experiences to teach him a new belief: that he is safe and provided for." So the family started a new routine. They consistently trained him, rewarded good behavior, and slowly, painstakingly, co-created a new shared world with the dog. Spitfire's belief changed, and so did his behavior. He became a gentle, loving companion. Michelle: So they changed the dog's belief by changing their own first—from "he's a problem dog" to "he's a dog who learned the wrong lessons." Mark: Precisely. And that's the pivot point of the whole book. If our beliefs create our reality, and they're just constructed models, then we can learn to become the architects of new, better ones.

Michelle: Okay, I'm convinced. I'm living in a self-sealing bubble of my own creation. It's a bit terrifying. So what does Gray say we should do about it? How do we pop the bubble? Mark: This is where he shifts from diagnosis to prescription. He introduces nine practices for what he calls being a "possibilitarian"—someone who focuses on creating new possibilities. The first step is a mindset shift, which he calls Practice 2: Empty Your Cup. It's an old Zen idea. If your cup is already full of your own opinions and assumptions, there's no room for anything new to be poured in. Michelle: I get the concept, but it sounds so… abstract. How do you actually 'empty your cup' when you're stressed at work and your boss is demanding answers, not Zen-like contemplation? Mark: He makes it very practical. It's about consciously suspending judgment. It's stopping, looking, and listening before you react. He tells the story of UNICEF's project in Uganda. They went in with the belief that giving people laptops would empower them to share their stories. Their cup was full of this "good idea." Michelle: And let me guess, it didn't work. Mark: It was a total failure. The people didn't want to share their stories with foreigners; they wanted clean water and fixed potholes. The laptops were useless to them. It was only when the UNICEF team "emptied their cup"—let go of their original belief and truly listened—that they found a solution that worked: using simple text messages on the mobile phones people already had to gather real-time data on community needs. They had to abandon their own "brilliant" idea to find the right one. Michelle: So emptying your cup is about humility. It's admitting that you might not have the answer, even if you're the expert in the room. Mark: Exactly. But my favorite practice is probably the most counterintuitive. It's Practice 6: Disrupt Routines. Gray argues that many of our most stubborn beliefs aren't conscious thoughts; they're embedded in our daily habits. And sometimes, the best way to break a cycle is to attack the solution, not the problem. Michelle: Attack the solution? What does that even mean? Mark: He gives this incredible story about a couple with a defiant teenage son. The problem was the son would stay out all night, breaking curfew. The parents' solution was to clamp down harder: grounding him, yelling, threatening. And the more they applied their "solution," the worse the problem got. Michelle: I think every parent has been there. It's a power struggle. Mark: A total power struggle. So they go to a therapist who gives them some truly bizarre advice. He says, "Tonight, tell your son you want him home by ten, but you realize you can't force him. Then, at ten o'clock, lock all the doors, turn off all the lights, and go to bed. When he finally gets home and starts banging on the door, make him wait five minutes. Then go to the door, acting sleepy, and say, 'Oh, we're so sorry, we were worried but we fell asleep. Come on in.'" Michelle: That is brilliant! It's like parental jujitsu. Instead of pushing back, you just… step aside. You take away the thing he's rebelling against. There's no wall to punch anymore. Mark: You got it. The routine was: son defies, parents punish, son defies more. By disrupting that routine, by attacking their own "solution" of punishment, they completely changed the dynamic. The son was left with nothing to fight against. The authority vanished, and suddenly, getting home on time became his problem to solve, not theirs. Michelle: I love that. It’s a real-world example of changing the game instead of just playing it harder. Does this apply in a more professional setting? Mark: Absolutely. Which brings us to Practice 7: Act As If. This is about testing a new belief by creating a small, temporary, parallel reality. He tells the story of Jason Roberts in Dallas, who was frustrated by the city's lack of public plazas and outdoor cafes. The city's belief was "It's too complicated, the rules are too strict, it's impossible." Michelle: The classic "we've always done it this way" belief. Mark: The very same. So instead of fighting city hall for years, Jason and his friends took a vacant lot for one weekend. They "acted as if" the rules didn't exist. They put down temporary grass, brought in tables and chairs to create a pop-up café, and narrowed the street with potted plants. They built the reality they wanted to see, just for a day. Then they invited the city council to come have a coffee. Michelle: That's bold. How did the council react? Mark: They loved it! They looked around and asked, "Why don't we have this?" The pop-up experiment revealed that the constraints weren't real laws of physics; they were just old, forgotten beliefs embedded in the city code. By acting as if a different reality was possible, they made it so. It led to real policy changes. It's the same principle a team at Intuit used when they ran a small, unauthorized sales experiment that ended up generating a huge portion of a product's revenue. They acted as if their new pricing model was approved, proved it worked on a small scale, and then presented the results.

Michelle: It feels like all these practices boil down to a kind of courageous curiosity. The courage to admit you might be wrong, and the curiosity to find out what might be right. Mark: That's a beautiful way to put it. Ultimately, Gray's message is that change isn't about grand gestures or overnight transformations. It's about developing psychological agility. It's the ability to see the boundaries of your own thinking and realize they're not walls, they're doorways. Michelle: It’s moving from being a character in your own story to being the editor. You can't change the events that happened, but you can change the meaning you assign to them, and that changes the entire plot going forward. You stop being a blind man arguing about the elephant and start asking the other blind men what they're feeling. Mark: And you start to piece together a much bigger, more accurate picture of the world. The book is really a toolkit for that process. It's received very positive feedback from readers for exactly that reason—it’s practical. It gives you the 'how.' Michelle: So for our listeners who are feeling a little bit like they're in a bubble right now, what's one small thing they can do this week to start practicing liminal thinking? Mark: Gray offers a great, simple practice. Just once this week, when you feel a strong emotional reaction to something—anger, defensiveness, frustration—pause for just a second and ask yourself, "What belief of mine is being challenged right now?" Don't judge it, don't fix it. Just notice it. That simple act of observation is the first step into that liminal, in-between space. That's the start of liminal thinking. Michelle: I love that. It's a mental check-in. And we'd love to hear what beliefs you all are challenging. Find us on our socials and share one belief you're re-examining. Let's build a community of 'possibilitarians.' Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.