In a vulnerable moment of a postgame press conference this weekend, Jets’ quarterback Justin Fields shared that he found himself in a ball, crying on the floor of his closet earlier in the week. They were 0-7 going into the weekend, the perennial disappointment of the Jets on repeat again.
And yet…they won.
The oft touted line in the NFL is one week at a time. And this one week, this one win, was enough to trigger the emotional underbelly of a quarterback trying to navigate his own growth.
What to do from here?
A question we all wrestle with.
There is who we are. And there is who we are becoming.
Those two exist at all times, and no one is excluded from this reality.
Entropy tells us that all systems, ourselves included, will have a gradual decline into disorder without structures in place to actively resist that decline.
If you think you are above personal growth, you’re either lying or not paying attention. We are all either growing or declining, evolving or devolving, moving forward or backward.
Roll your eyes if you must. But I recommend opening them.
We live in the liminal.
The challenge with personal growth is that it’s disorienting.
In the known world - the way we exist today - the landscape is clear. We know how to operate in this place because it’s where we’ve been. The paths, characters, and roles are all familiar.
Yet the moment we start being intentional about growth, the landscape quickly becomes novel.
No map. No compass. No playbook. Every bone in our body telling us to stay put. It’s safe here. Why risk the wilderness when the couch will do.
So we keep one foot in and one foot out. We touch the void, only to be pulled back to the familiar.
In my early 20s, a woman at my gym would come in nearly every day for personal training. And her trainer was one of the best of the best.
She was obese, in the literal sense, and as many months passed by I noticed she wasn’t losing any weight. It piqued my curiosity. So I asked her trainer one day why he thought she wasn’t making any progress.
“Oh, she doesn’t want to lose weight. She just wants to be able to walk around the mall with her friends, who are also overweight.”
One foot in the void. And one foot in the familiar.
The void is the silence between what was and what will be.
And that silence is deafening.
But what is that thing pulling us forward into the void anyway? Where does it come from? How can we be compelled by…nothing?
Enter the voice.
If the void is silence, the voice is a whisper.
It’s what nudges us toward growth in the first place.
It’s the thing that remains when the ego and identity are stripped bare.
I know this voice. You know this voice. It’s the echo of our future selves saying “Hey, over here!”
As a coach, I’m confronted on a daily basis with the liminal space. Of the dozens and dozens of people I’ve coached over the past few years, every single one of them wrestles with the void. From failed behavior changes, to career crossroads, to the questions of life, big and small - What to do from here? is ever present.
I can’t answer that question as their coach.
But the voice can.
And so I point them toward the only truth I know - silence the ego so the whispers can be heard. Mute the trappings of the familiar so the echo of the unknown can speak.
Clarity does not come from trying to intellectually process our lives. It comes from…somewhere else.
Call it the gut. Call it the higher self. Call it the soul. Call it intuition. Call it spirit.
Call it whatever you want.
But there is a part of us that knows what to do and where to go. Our job is to give it space to speak. Because the only way we can successfully navigate the void is by being compelled by something that is greater than the ego and identity competing for our attention.
Grounded in the familiar. Pulled to the unknown.
The tension of the human experience.
We live in the liminal, the space where wisdom is earned. Where maps, compasses, and playbooks cease to exist.
When the void becomes so deafening that we’re pulled back to the familiar, consider it a nudge - a reminder - that there’s an answer underneath the chaos.
And it comes in the form of a whisper.
Beautifully expressed. The liminal is where the real work happens…between the silence of what’s ending and the whisper of what’s next. That tension is where we learn to listen.
Great post Adam.
Check out this concept, I think you’ll find it super relevant for this topic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis
Let’s get to work!