Liminal Thinking: Shaping Beliefs for Personal Growth

Packt via Coursera

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Provider

Coursera
Pricing

Paid Course
Languages

English
Certificate

Paid Certificate Available
Duration & workload

5 hours 19 minutes
Sessions

On-Demand
Subtitles

English

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Overview

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This course explores how belief systems shape your decisions and interactions, offering tools to challenge entrenched assumptions and rewrite your mental models. This course provides actionable practices based on cognitive science to help you spot mental blind spots, fostering more adaptive and effective thinking. By mastering nine practical techniques, you will transform your perspectives and enhance communication within your teams and organization. The course focuses on empowering you to diagnose how individual and collective beliefs form, persist, and influence behaviors. It provides a structured approach to reshaping these beliefs for personal growth and organizational success. You will also learn to use empathy and critical inquiry to dismantle self-sealing logic, opening up new possibilities for change. What sets this course apart is its blend of cognitive theory and real-world application. You will not only understand belief systems but gain a clear set of tools to shift thinking and drive transformation. The nine practices taught are field-tested and highly practical, ensuring that you can apply them immediately in your daily work. This course is ideal for change agents, coaches, facilitators, and professionals who guide others through uncertainty. While no formal psychology background is required, a willingness to experiment with new mindsets and challenge assumptions will help you maximize the results. Copyright © 2016 Dave Gray. All rights reserved. Originally published by Rosenfeld Media, LLC., This course edition is published by Packt Publishing under license from Rosenfeld Media LLC. No part of this material may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means —electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission from the author or the publisher.

Syllabus

Principle 1: Beliefs Are Models

In the section, we dissect the Blind Men and the Elephant parable, revealing how subjective experiences form partial models and showing methods to merge diverse perspectives for more objective understanding.

Principle 2: Beliefs Are Created

In this section, we link sensory data to layered cognition, applying the pyramid-of-belief model to dissect competing narratives in societal conflict and sharpen assumption-challenging dialogue.

Principle Beliefs Create a Shared World

In this section, we trace how needs activate If-x-then-y belief rules, execute actions, and employ a continuous learning loop to validate feedback, refine strategies, and foster adaptive decision-making.

Principle 4: Beliefs Create Blind Spots

In this section, we will explore how limiting beliefs mask options, and learn liminal thinking strategies that challenge assumptions, expose hidden opportunities, and broaden personal and professional decision space.

Principle 5: Beliefs Defend Themselves

In this section, we examine partisan reactions to disconfirming evidence and dissect self-sealing logic, revealing how belief bubbles shape shared maps and offering strategies to expose loops and improve decisions.

Principle 6: Beliefs Are Tied to Identity

In this section, we dissect how governing beliefs intertwine with identity, distinguish them from surface opinions, and review studies linking perceived powerlessness to conspiracy theory adoption.

Practice 1: Assume That You Are Not Objective

In this section, we use the Johari Window to locate leadership blind spots, link personal reactions to suppressed feedback, and reframe organizational problems through systemic thinking for clearer, collaborative solutions.

Practice 2: Empty Your Cup

In this section, we uncover hidden assumptions in change projects, practice deep listening to stakeholder needs, and design context-aware, SMS-based solutions leveraging existing local technology for sustainable impact.

Practice 3: Create a Safe Space

In this section, we uncover emotional barriers to change, assess how lacking psychological safety derails follow-through, and design practical techniques that cultivate open dialogue and authentic commitment within teams.

Practice 4: Triangulate and Validate

In this section, we apply Popper's falsifiability to team hypotheses, distinguish self-fulfilling beliefs from testable explanations, and design evidence-seeking conversations that surface real motives, enabling healthier collaboration and decisions.

Practice 5: Ask Questions, Make Connections

In this section, we practice formulating open-ended questions, observe systems with outsider clarity, and link disparate insights to uncover latent needs and craft integrated, resource-smart solutions across complex environments.

Practice 6: Disrupt Routines

In this section, we diagnose self-reinforcing feedback loops behind interpersonal doom cycles and apply systems thinking to disrupt autopilot routines, revealing how modest tactical changes transform outcomes.

Practice 7: Act as If in the Here and Now

In this section, we act as if desired futures exist, build guerrilla prototypes to expose hidden constraints, and compare single-loop refinement with double-loop belief shifts for transformative learning.

Practice 8: Making Sense With Stories

In this section, we examine how storytelling breaks self-sealing logic, design effective story prompts, and explore neural coupling, cortisol, and oxytocin to transform raw data into shared, actionable insight.

Practice 9: Evolve Yourself

In this section, we test workplace norms by enacting tiny deliberate deviations, then analyze how low-risk experiments shift perceptions, invite collaboration, and catalyze broader personal and organizational change.