Is the time to embrace the expansion AND the contraction?
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Effective Immediately. It is me Rebecca Wiener McGregor and I’m coming to you with another episode of the show where we talk about everything, mindset, abundance, healthy emotions, leadership, and so much more.
And today I want to give you an insight, a new understanding about contraction. Okay? This is extremely valuable. Because we as high achievers love the state of expansion, we love to be in that powerful state where everything seems to be running on all pistons and we are moving along expanding, growing, everything seems to be going our way, everything seems to be working, we’re attracting new opportunities, new clients, new people into our lives. And we are having a fantastic time. Now, contraction comes, things slow down, things that felt easy seem to be a little bit harder, the ease slows down a bit, the resistance shows up, the reduced energy shows up, and along with it can come a lot of frustration, and a lot of irritation, and a lot of shame. Okay, so it’s a very, very valuable time. This contraction is a very valuable time and I want to help you see it from a new way and help you embrace both the expansion, embrace both the expansion and the contraction.
Okay, so imagine things are working just great for you. They’re clicking, everything’s going your way and something seems to shift. Something seems to slow down internally. Immediately, you get that feeling of irritation, resistance, frustration with yourself, wishing that things would be different, wishing that things would be easier, wondering what you have done wrong, that you are now in this place of contraction. And here’s the best part, you haven’t done anything wrong. Expansion and contraction are important parts of your spiritual, personal, business growth journey. We need to gather the energy during the contraction in order to allow for another expansion. Okay, so very often, like I mentioned, during these periods of contraction, high achievers, high performers, will get frustrated and feel like they’ve done something wrong to end up in contraction. This is one of those moments where I’m going to remind you to give yourself a lot of grace. A lot of grace here. And try not to judge yourself, okay? So if you’ve ever dealt with this, I want you to listen along, follow along, and hear and trust that you have done what you needed to do. And that you’re gonna get lots of little juicy nuggets today about how you can move through your next contraction. Maybe you’re in it right now. Maybe you’re just coming out of it. But all of this is really valuable insight. Okay?
So contraction. It’s not as fun. Let’s just face it, contraction is not as fun as the expansion, when things are going the way that you want them to go and everything is happening with ease. It’s almost like you look at something and it turns into an opportunity for you. That’s fun, right? That’s exciting. You’re growing, you’re having new ideas, new strategies coming to mind, you are in a very fun, creative, imaginative state. Everything seems to be flowing. And when the flow starts to go and become a trickle, you might start to wonder what you’re doing wrong. What haven’t I been doing right? What’s the thing that I did that turned this so that it started to get hard? What did I do that started to make this difficult for myself? These are very, very common questions. I want to remind you that every time you are in a big expansion, the expansion cannot go on forever. That amount of energy cannot happen forever. And that’s okay. You get to come back, gather your strength, gather wisdom, and prepare yourself for the next expansion becoming the next version of yourself. Doesn’t that feel so much more loving than the shame of a contraction? This is a time it’s almost like the nesting phase that people talk about right before they have children when they’re preparing for that big new thing to come into their lives, right? Okay, so you have not done anything wrong to get here. And I want to look at some valuable things that can happen in a contraction.
A Personal Example of Contraction
Okay, I’m going to tell you a story, something that happened to me, I believe it was 2018. It’s kind of a blur right now. 2018 or 2017. I’m a hypnotist, I’m a coach, and I got laryngitis for two months. You can imagine because I talk for a living, that that was not a really great time. This was a very powerful contraction in my life. And I was in a state of frustration and anger. New clients were coming to me, new things were happening to me, but my body was in a state of contraction. My voice was not working the way I wanted it to. Some clients came to me, worked with me during this period, and never even heard my real, actual voice. When this happened, when this laryngitis came, it stayed for two months, okay? Two months out of a year. That’s a big deal. When you’re a high achiever when you’re moving forward, when you’re trying to do all the things. And I was immediately in a state of frustration with myself, angry at my body, angry at what could I have done. What? How? How could I have made this happen to myself? How could I have created this for myself? And feeling so terrible about it, feeling so ashamed, so guilty, so scared, that I was going to not only suffer like this and have this laryngitis problem for the long term because it didn’t seem to go away overnight like things usually did. And wondering what was going to happen to me next. Where would I end up next, if this problem continued, if this contraction stayed this way? And to be honest, at this time, I think I only felt like contraction was something that happened to people when they weren’t doing their best when they weren’t performing the way they needed to. I thought contraction was a place to be embarrassed about. I thought getting sick was something to be embarrassed of. I thought that being in a contraction meant that I had done something wrong. So I spend a lot of time during this contraction in straight-up victim mode. Thinking that oh my gosh, since I created this, what was I doing wrong? What was going to happen to me next? How am I gonna get out of this? Will I ever get out of this? It was terrifying. So you can imagine there wasn’t a lot of grace at the beginning, right? And something really powerful happen. One day I was resting because I needed a lot of rest. During this time. I turned on YouTube and searched for something to help me with my mindset at that moment. And this woman, this beautiful human was talking about how contraction is just as important as expansion. And in our contractions, we will find wisdom, we will find a lesson, we will find some new bit of something that we need that will give us the strength and the energy to move forward into the next expansion. What a gift. What a gift.
So as I’m saying this, I hope that this reaches you at a time when you’re not in shame, when you’re not in frustration over the contraction, but that you will remember these words the next time you’re in that state. The contraction is an important place because we need emotional rest stops. We need rest stops, we need times of rest and renewal on our stage on our path to our next expansion. This is such a valuable place. It’s so important because we will turn to resistance. We will turn it to resistance and that we have real, then we start digging deep, we start looking for things that will help us. And we may stumble upon the person or the resource that can help us in our next level, our next state of personal growth, spiritual growth, business development, whatever it is. When this happens, we need to recognize the need for the contraction, we need to recognize that this is where we are supposed to be when we’re here. Often when we are really frustrated, when we are irritated, we’re in that down place resistance, and anger and frustration can grow. But imagine looking at the situation through eyes of acknowledgment, through eyes of honoring where you are, through the heart of honoring and acknowledging and validating where you are instead of judgment. If you’ve been hanging around me for any time at all, you know that I’m going to encourage you to release all judgment when you’re in this place. For you to start to put your hand on your heart again, start to acknowledge what’s happening, start to honor, start to validate yourself. Look at what’s happening, without judgment, looking at all of it as data, deepening your grace for yourself and your self-compassion. Now, if you have been fighting with yourself some levels of anxiety, you are ready for a reset so that you can hear your inner wisdom through you can hear your inner wisdom, you can feel your energy, without the interference of resistance, I want you to reach out to me. Okay? You can look me up on rebeccawiener.com. You can book a call with me at callwithrebecca.com, the Reset Day might be just the ticket for you. And if you are struggling to find this inner love, again, this, getting out of this resistance, getting out of the anxiety that has been building because of the stress in your life, this may be just the thing for you.
Okay, so I want you to go just a little bit deeper now into how to treat yourself with compassion during your contraction. Now, if you allow it, your self-awareness and your intuition will grow during these times. This is the most important time for you to listen to your body and to talk to yourself and to hear its wisdom. These times of quiet, times of rest are important. You may be an extrovert and think you know people is what I need right now. You may be an introvert and think quiet is what I need right now. You may think these are the patterns that I’ve had before and this is what I need. And maybe your body is calling out for something different right now, maybe your mind is calling out for something different. Maybe your spirit is calling out for something different. Maybe the thing that you need is to talk to someone. Maybe the thing that you need is to have more quiet. You get to honor whatever wisdom your body shows you. You get to honor any wisdom that your body shows you. You get to be so kind to her, you get to be so loving to her, and ask her, ‘What do you need right now? Do you need quiet? Do you need times of not trying to figure out the new strategy? Do you need time to not try to figure out what to do with that person on your team, what role they’re going to play in the next level of your business?’ It’s not that you have to shut down doing all the things in your life. This may be the perfect time though for a little slowdown. Contraction can take longer when you’re in resistance to it. Contraction can go very quickly when you’re in alignment and you’re being loving with yourself when you’re open to the idea of contraction. Now that sounds kind of wild, right? Because your high-achieving self wants to keep moving forward, wants to go go go, wants it to go quickly, wants it to be easy. And you love the ease and you think ‘Okay, I’m in this contraction, the most important thing that I have to do is get out of it right now’. But perhaps the most important thing that you have to do is listen to what the contraction is trying to guide you. What it’s trying to tell you, where it’s trying to guide you, and where you can go next. So this day, when I took to the bed and was watching the YouTube video, and the person said, “Your contraction is just as important as your expansion” released immediately, all the shame, and all of the guilt, and all of the blame and all the victimhood that I was having. It was such a powerful moment for me. So I want you to remember, anytime you feel that slowdown, anytime you feel that anxiety, that irritation, that frustration, these feelings do not need more judgment, because it will only add more of the yucky feeling to it. Judgment is not a beneficial feeling for you to feel. So as you feel these feelings, start to put your hand on your heart and ask your body okay, I’m feeling this resistance. What could this? What could this mean? What could this mean for me? What do I need right now? What is the resistance? asking of me? What is the resistance requiring of me right now? And when you slow down and start asking these questions, what is the anger requiring of me right now? What is it asking me? What is it trying to protect me from? What is the irritation, the resistance, the embarrassment, the shame? What are all those things asking me right now? What can I learn about myself right now? Maybe there’s nothing to learn. Maybe it’s simply getting to a place where you can love yourself no matter what emotions are coming up. Loving yourself, even though you need a rest. Loving yourself even though stress has been fuel for you. But right now you can feel that the stress has brought you to a place where you need a pitstop, you need a rest. You need to recalibrate. You need to revisit your vision. Really think about, ‘Am I in alignment with what I want? If I expand into this next, how will it feel? How will it look? Will it bring me what I actually want? Will it bring me the peace, the joy, the contentment, the appreciation that I actually want?’
What is Contraction Calling You To Do?
A contraction may be calling you to do a little bit of a little bit of an assessment. I’m not talking about judgment, I’m talking about an assessment of where you are and what you want. Life has a beautiful way of going really fast, moving so quickly. And if we are moving in a direction, that there might be some hesitation about, some part of you is like, Okay, we’re almost there we’re almost to the destination, I want to make sure that you really want to be here. This is really what you want for yourself. You’re going to need a lot of extra energy when we get there because it’s going to be new, there are going to be new challenges, there’s going to be change, there’s going to be up levels and upgrades happening all the time. You’re going to need the energy for it. So we’re going to slow you down a little bit so you can gather that energy. Gather your energy, your intuition, reconnect with your body, reconnect with your mission, your vision, your desires, so that you can move forward. Imagine that contraction that you’ve been fighting with. That state of things slowing down that you’ve been fighting with feeling shame is actually a gift, a gift for you to recalibrate, to re-energize, to reset, to reboot to refocus, to revive yourself for the next stage of your journey. Doesn’t feel incredibly different? Can you imagine how swiftly you can move through contraction that way, rather than being in this deep judgment or shame about it? Be so kind and loving to yourself. Look at the limits that you may be feeling. Look at what your body and your mind and your spirit are calling out to you for what they might need, what they might desire, what growth might need to happen. Let this be a place of self-reflection, where you gather energy, where you gather your wisdom. And you get to think about ‘Okay, where am I limiting myself here? Where am I going to grow? How is this going to happen? What can this look like?’ You are going to have some really wonderful epiphanies and ideas during this time. And it will all be about the inner workings. It will all be new understandings, new bits of wisdom that you can take to your next level. So, yes, expansion is fabulous, because it is the energy, the growth, the implementation of new energies and new wisdom and all of that that you’ve had, and it’s wonderful. And the, your attraction levels are so strong, your vibration is so high, everything is moving along the way you want. And life is just keeping you in the energy that you need to do more of that. So when the contraction comes, allow it. Be loving with yourself. Thank the contraction for showing up. Imagine, thank the contraction for showing up. Give me the wisdom I need. Ask yourself and life to give you the wisdom that you need. Give you the next step that you need. Give you the rest that you need, and enjoy every bit of it. Okay? How does that feel? Just kind of connect with yourself. Notice if you’re feeling any resistance to it. Notice if you’re feeling any frustration if you’re feeling any shame.
Your Effective Immediately Shift
I promised last week that I would share an experience of Emotional Freedom Technique EFT. I do use this along with hypnosis with my clients while they’re in hypnosis. And I use it myself between sessions to focus my energy, to release any resistance and I’m going to show you how to do that today. Okay? So I taught you this really powerful setup statement last time. And it’s the same in that you can use any single moment when you’re feeling frustration, when you’re feeling irritation, when you’re feeling disconnected. You can come home to yourself simply by saying “Even though I’m feeling frustration, even though I’m feeling resistance, I deeply and completely love and accept myself”. That statement right there is the setup statement for EFT and it also is a beautiful statement for you to use any time that you are feeling frustrated with yourself, with your life, with feeling that you’re having with a situation because it allows you to feel anything else other than joy and happiness and ease and flow and all of that great stuff. You can feel other feelings, the ones that don’t feel so great, and still love yourself at the same time. What a powerful gift to give yourself, right? To know that even though I feel frustrated, even though I feel resistance, even though I feel irritated, I deeply and completely love and accept myself. You can have both feelings. At the same time. You can still love yourself that doesn’t have to go away. Okay, so using EFT, you have a feeling of some kind of thing that is not serving you. You’ve honored the feeling. You’ve validated your emotions around it and actually, this will help you validate and honor your feelings as well. You start with a setup statement on this point called the karate chop and you say “Even though I feel resistance, I deeply and completely love and accept myself. Even though I feel resistance I deeply and completely love and accept myself” and you can just follow along because as I go you will learn. “Even though I feel resistance, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” And I’m going to walk you through the tapping points as we tap together. The resistance, the frustration, the irritation. The resistance, the tension, the stuckness, the irritation. What do I need right now? What can I give myself right now? The heaviness, the tension, the thoughts, the irritation, the resistance, the resistance, you just talk about the feelings that you’re feeling. And whatever comes up in your mind whatever comes up in your emotions, whatever comes up comes up in your memories, you honor it. Even though I feel this resistance, I feel tension, feel frustration feel irritated, sad, heaviness in my stomach. Collarbone. The feeling, the resistance, the irritation, the frustration, sadness, the grief. Whatever the feeling is. And then your rib, you can come at it from the side or the front. Tapping on the rib. The frustration, the resistance, the irritation, the hurt, the anger, the sadness. You may feel all of that right now, the way the world is. Top of your head is the last spot. The frustration, the resistance, the irritation. Now, if you’ve been tapping along, you’re going to notice that your body has calmed down. Your amygdala, the fight-flight emotion center of your brain, has been calming as you’ve been tapping, moving to these different points. The tapping helps to move the energy through your body, helps you to slow down, puts you in a slightly altered state where you are focused on the feelings. You’re focused on connecting with your body. You’re focused on the emotions. You’re focused on the tapping. It helps you to honor and allow those emotions to move on. Such a powerful gift to give yourself, right?
Let’s go do one more round. The irritation, the frustration. I can’t believe I’m in this contraction. What have I done wrong? What am I doing wrong? How am I wrong? Your body might reset. I felt somebody reset there. You might give yourself a big breath. As you’re tapping and you’re noticing the feelings in your body, how they’re shifting maybe that heaviness on your chest went to a tight feeling in your stomach or vice versa. The frustration, the irritation, the resistance. You might even notice a yawn come. A yawn is a sign of a reset, a recalibration. The frustration, the irritation, the pain, the anger, the sadness, whatever the thing is that you’re feeling. On the rib. The frustration, the irritation, the feelings, whatever they are, the tension, the tightness. And the top of the head. The resistance, the anger, the shame, the frustration. Whatever the thing that you’re feeling, you’ll notice that it has calmed down, that it has calmed down for you. It has reduced. If you are in a very heightened state when you start this process, you may notice that the feeling will increase and then decrease. So if you got to a place where it increased, continue tapping and allow it to always get to complete relaxation. Now one of the things that you can do when you start is to actually rate the feeling, rate the irritating, non-beneficial feeling that you’re not enjoying that you want to help validate move out of your body. Rate it 0 to 10. 10 being the strongest it’s ever been felt, 0 being complete relaxation. And go through the tapping sequences. And check in after each one to see where you are, what number you’re feeling. And it just takes a few minutes to shift. So allow yourself to get all the way to zero before you move on. Okay? It’s a beautiful gift to give yourself remember that beautiful, loving opening statement that even though you’re feeling whatever you’re feeling, you can deeply and completely love and accept yourself at the very same time. Okay.
So now coming back to the expansion and the contraction noticing that they are both equally valid, equally important. Be super loving with yourself. Reach out if you need support, you know where to find me, rebeccawiener.com, or schedule your call with me at callwithrebecca.com and I will help you move through this. Help you get recalibrated. Help you get reset, and help you feel better and more loving with yourself, more connected to yourself, and deeper in your wisdom than ever before. All right, be sure to be loving with yourself. And I’ll see you next week. Bye for now.
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About the Author:
Rebecca Wiener McGregor, also known as The Anxiety Eraser, is a seasoned transformational hypnotist, trauma healer, and abundance coach. Since 2004, she guides visionary women to break free from anxiety, blocks, traumas, and fears, leading them to a life filled with abundance and purpose. Through her book “Loving Her” and work with conscious women executives, leaders, coaches, and healers worldwide, Rebecca sparks profound transformations, helping her clients embrace their true selves and create impactful, joyful, fulfilling lives.
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For speaking and podcasting appearances: love@rebeccawiener.com