Volatility as a Feature, Not a Bug—The Hidden Pattern Behind Growth

What If Losing Your Footing Was The First Step Forward?

Have you ever felt like you finally broke through? Like you had figured it out—life made sense, everything aligned, and a weight lifted off your shoulders?
And then, just as suddenly, the ground disappeared beneath you.

For me, that moment came after a trip to Florida. My body moved with ease. My mind felt wide open—clearer than it had in years. Even the people around me noticed—someone at work told me I was glowing. (I wrote about this shift in last week’s issue—if you missed it, you can read it here.)

For two weeks, I thought I had stepped into a new reality.

And then—just as suddenly—it wasn’t.

The clarity dissolved. The peace vanished. And all the emotions I thought I had released? They came surging back, stronger than ever.

I wasn’t just expanding—I was contracting.

I fought it. I wanted to hold onto the lightness I had felt. But the more I resisted, the harder it hit.

My jaw locked up so severely I could barely eat. Pain shot down my neck and into my back, radiating through my entire body from head to toe. My nervous system, which had settled in Florida, snapped back into the fight-or-flight mode it had lived in for over 20 years.

I was preparing for a trip with my 7-year-old to visit my parents in North Dakota for his birthday, but my mind was racing.

Racing thoughts. Looping analysis. A desperate attempt to make sense of what was happening.

My therapist suggested acupuncture to ease the pain, but I still felt trapped, disconnected from my body. For the rest of March and most of April, I was stuck—lost in my mind, locked in my body.

Then, in May, I attended my first-ever meditation retreat—a full week in silence. I didn’t fully understand what I was walking into, but looking back, it was a turning point. More on that shortly, but first—let’s talk about what happens when the volatility kicks in.

Growth Isn’t Linear—It’s Volatile

It’s natural to hope that change will be smooth and predictable.

You learn something new, experience a shift, and move forward.

But real transformation doesn’t work that way.

It follows a pattern:

🔹 Expansion – A surge of progress, new ideas, rapid movement.
🔹 Contraction – Resistance, breakdowns, discomfort, chaos.
🔹 Recalibration – A new foundation emerges.

This is true in personal growth.
It’s true in financial markets.
It’s true in Bitcoin.

If you’ve ever questioned whether you’re making progress because things feel chaotic—you’re not alone. Growth doesn’t move in a straight line. It moves like Bitcoin.

Bitcoin isn’t volatile because it’s broken. It’s volatile because it’s alive— just like any system undergoing real transformation.

Every new paradigm follows this pattern—chaos, recalibration, then stability at a higher level.

When you step into a new way of being, your old self doesn’t just disappear overnight. Your nervous system, your identity, your relationships—they all have to adjust. And that adjustment is rarely smooth.

So the cycles repeat. Breakthrough. Disorientation. Recalibration.

And if you don’t expect the volatility, it’s easy to mistake it for failure.

But what if the breakdowns, the doubt, the uncertainty—
What if those weren’t setbacks, but necessary steps?

The Hidden Risk: Expecting Stability Too Soon

Most people aren’t afraid of change itself.
They’re afraid of what change demands.

To truly transform, you don’t just get to add something new—you have to let go of what no longer fits.

But here’s the thing: your mind doesn’t want to let go.
Neither does your body.
Neither do the people around you.

So when you start evolving, the first instinct is to grip onto stability.

Maybe if I just double down on my old habits, this discomfort will pass.
Maybe if I explain it the right way, people won’t look at me like I’m crazy.
Maybe if I wait long enough, I’ll go back to how things used to be.

But growth doesn’t offer that option.

Bitcoin doesn’t ‘start over’ after every cycle. It weathers turbulence, recalibrates, and emerges stronger.

This isn’t just a personal process. It’s playing out everywhere—across markets, technology, consciousness, and even civilization itself.

The old world is shaking, and a new one is trying to emerge.

You either ride the waves of volatility—or you get pulled under.

Learning to Move With It

So, what do you do when everything inside you is resisting the volatility of transformation?

You let it move through you.

Instead of grasping for certainty, you start to trust the process itself.

You stop fighting the contraction and recognize that it’s part of the recalibration.
You stop seeking immediate resolution and let the discomfort teach you something.
You stop trying to “figure it all out” and instead get curious about what’s unfolding.

At the meditation retreat in May, I experienced my first real release since Florida. The tension in my body didn’t disappear completely, but even a 20-30% release felt like an oasis after a long drought—like finally coming up for air after being underwater, a taste of heaven after so much tension.

When you remove the noise—no screens, no distractions, no external validation—the mind slows down. The nervous system begins to recalibrate.

I grounded myself by focusing on my feet instead of letting my mind dominate the experience. It wasn’t a full resolution, but it was a stark contrast to the contraction I had felt in March.

This cycle—expansion, contraction, recalibration—isn’t just something to endure. It’s the process of becoming.

As I learned from my teacher, Thomas McConkie, one of the most powerful tools for navigating volatility is simply observing sensation.

Instead of resisting discomfort, I started checking in with myself:
Am I safe?
If the answer was yes, I would sit with whatever I was feeling, letting it move through me instead of fighting it.

Other tools helped too—walking outside, acupuncture, journaling, and grounding myself in my feet rather than my thoughts.

The more I leaned into these practices, the more I saw volatility for what it was:
A feature, not a bug.

Volatility isn’t failure—it’s the signal beneath the noise.

In markets and in life, it’s the process of discovering what’s actually valuable.

The Invitation: What If Volatility is the Path?

This week, I’m sitting with this question:

“What if everything I’ve been resisting is actually the invitation into my next transformation?”

If you’ve ever experienced the turbulence of real transformation—whether personal, spiritual, or financial—I’d love to hear how you moved through it.

Because maybe, just maybe, volatility isn’t something to escape.

And maybe that’s the point—real change, real transformation, doesn’t happen on a timeline we control. It happens in waves, in cycles, in the quiet spaces between what was and what’s becoming. The sooner we stop fighting that, the freer we become.

📌 If this resonates, consider forwarding it to someone who might be in the middle of their own storm. Volatility isn’t something to escape—it’s something to embrace.

Big Love,
— Matt
Founder, The Liminal Leap

P.S. People have been asking me if, through this paradigm shift, I’ve lost my faith. The answer is no. If anything, the depth of my faith has only strengthened. Next week, we’ll explore what we can learn from death and resurrection—not just as a theological concept, but as a lived experience of transformation.