Expansion & Contraction
How To Both Manage Sudden Failure & Sudden Success
One of the skills most business owners need to master is the ability to cope with contraction and expansion. Though it may sound that it is easier to cope with expansion in the form of success than it is to manage failures, I have come to realise that both strong changes in contraction & expansion are challenging in their own ways.
In this article, let’s break down: expansion and contraction, how to cope with sudden changes of identity, co-existence of both cycles and the best ways to stay grounded in the process.
Expansion & Contraction
Through our past conditioning, we have some core beliefs around who we are - these identity beliefs shape what we believe is right or not for us. As we grow and expand, we shift our perception, and our sense of identity changes.
When we are faced with sudden contraction (‘failure’), or sudden expansion (‘success’), our identity beliefs are being challenged.
Here’s an interesting part I realised, sometimes contraction is easier to cope with mentally because it confirms hidden beliefs we had about ourselves (such as ‘I knew this wouldn’t work’, ‘I knew I wasn’t really worth it’ etc.). This doesn’t mean that failure is easy, but rather that our mind can sometimes adapt to it faster. Then you still want to do something about it, because you’re disappointed or upset, but sometimes the identity stretch isn’t that big.
Sudden success on the other hand, can tremendously challenge your inner beliefs about yourself and your own abilities. Any self-doubt you have will come crawling in to sabotage your ‘success’, try to diminish it or even turn down huge opportunities, out of fear. This is because the brain is too far stretched from what it believes you deserve.
Look, I’m not saying failure is better than success. Of course, being successful in your life and business is exciting and thrilling. What I’m saying is the moment of transition, when it’s a fast jump to a higher level of success and a sense of great expansion, this can be very challenging emotionally.
The thing is we all know that failure (and contraction) will feel tough, we will be upset, it will rock our world, and it will be difficult. But we don’t necessarily expect that sudden leaps in success will also feel challenging. At least, I never thought that would be hard. I always thought failure was the tough part, and success was the easy bit. That’s not how it works - whatever is too much of a stretch for our brain in terms of our identity and security, will feel nerve-wracking.
'Failure is success in progress. ' - Albert Einstein.
Both failure and success are perceptions:
Failure is when you perceive that you received less than you expected.
Success is the perception that you received more than you expected.
This is individual. Even though there is a society definition of success (often involving status and money), our actual perception of what failure & success for us is dependent on our expectations and vision for ourselves. Somebody’s biggest failure would be somebody else’s greatest success and vice versa.
Expansion and contraction are a dance. Both express themselves physically through a sensation, mentally through thoughts and emotionally through feelings.
In both high contraction, and high expansion, I have felt huge overwhelm, very emotional, and a lot of fear. The emotions have been very similar - only the cause of the emotions, and the exact thoughts were different. In both cases though, my mind would freak out and it was essentially saying: ‘This is not in my comfort zone - I don’t like it - change, make it easier, better somehow.’
If I look back at one time with strong contraction, I was in a state of almost panic, worrying, thinking about it all the time and crying. And then, thinking back to a recent time of strong expansion, I was euphoric (and almost in panic), thinking about it all the time, strong emotional fluctuations, and exhausted in the evenings, incapable of doing anything.
It’s funny really, the symptoms are very similar, in both cases I felt uncomfortable - the difference is in contraction, I felt I had to let go, whereas in expansion, I felt I had to surrender.
In such moments, it’s important to remember that we only feel this way because we’re out of your comfort zone, and that both expansion & contraction co-exist and that’s what life is all about.
Co Existence
Expansion and contraction co-exist, you can’t have one without the other. In other words, you can’t experience success if you’ve never felt failure. And you can’t fully feel failure, if you’ve never experienced success.
Furthermore, ‘success’ is built upon failure after failure. The stepping stones for success are failures. It’s not possible to just experience success without the failure.
Once you understand that they co-exist, we can also see that there are cycles - especially in business. Cycles of expansion and cycles of contraction. When you are experiencing one cycle that feels tough, it can be helpful to remember that no cycle ever lasts forever, and then it will be another cycle…
“It is the essence and nature of Divinity to have rhythm, cycles, contraction and expansion,” Megan Graham, author of The Expansion and Contraction of Energetics
If we block the natural cycles of expansion and contraction, then we are not letting the energy flow.
I remember once my coach Luisa telling me that maybe my contraction phase had been preparing me for the expansion to come. And sure enough, a few months later, I experienced one of the biggest expansions in my business.
We need the contraction to regenerate, reflect, realign and re-ignite.
Equally, we need the expansion, to grow, fly, impact, contribute and level up.
If you were always in contraction, you would feel depressed, low, and like nothing is making a difference.
If you were always in expansion, you would feel exhausted, burnt out, and chronically overwhelmed.
Whether you are going through Contraction or Expansion, the best tools to cope with the strong energetic shifts, is to surrender and to ground yourself.
Surrendering and Staying Grounded
When you are faced with challenges, and a sudden shift from expansion to contraction, or from contraction to expansion, the exact same thing will happen. This is what occurs: you disconnect from yourself, from the present moment, and you get lost in your mind, thoughts. In other words, sudden energetic shifts make you less conscious, because your mind is trying to understand it all.
That’s why the best tools is: surrendering and grounding.
Surrendering is accepting and understanding the change of cycle.
Grounding is re-connecting with yourself, life, the present moment and being conscious again.
To practise surrendering:
Allow thoughts to come and go, and don’t cling to them
Connect back to your senses, and to the present moment
Focus on simplicity and gratitude.
To practise grounding:
Go back to the basics: remember what matters is the present moment, breathing, health, and the people in your life.
Detach from the mind, and focus on what your senses
Nature is the greatest asset to grounding. Spend time walking in nature
Practise meditation, yoga, Qi Gong…
‘This too shall pass’
Journal: the learnings, the thought processes, the emotions
Change: Observe your relationship with change and uncertainty, and practise Wu Wei - going with the flow of life.
Support: Create a support system to help you deal with the different emotions
Rest: Allow yourself to rest to enable your brain and nervous system to process all the current changes in your life.
Gratitude: This is a superpower! In contraction phases, it makes you focus on what is still wonderful in your life. In expansion phases, it allows you to embrace the expansion and appreciate it!
I’ve been thinking a lot about both expansion and contraction recently. Having experienced both very strong contraction, and very strong expansion - both of which were tough to process and manage.
The main thing I realised is that if we allow these phases to happen, and we let our nervous system process it (through rest, grounding, surrendering), then we can actually learn to enjoy both types of cycles.
Feel the lows. Feel the highs. There is beauty in each cycle, if we pause to look for the beauty. A lot of the magic happens in those phases of transition from one cycle to the next. Magic, learning, growth, if we take the moment to surrender.
Connect with the magic,
Thank you for reading and enjoy the journey,
Katie